Annual Digital Payments to Reach £3tn by 2019

The total yearly transactional value of digital payments is expected to reach £2.8tn by 2019, according to a new report.

The study from Juniper Research shows that as we approach the end of the decade, mobile, contactless and online transactions will almost double the £1.5tn ($2.5tn, €1.8tn) expected in 2014.

The report claims that the largest net increase will come from buying goods online. This bulge will especially be driven by emerging markets such as China, where global online trader Alibaba accounted for a fifth of the world's B2C and C2C eRetail in 2013.

One highlight of the report is the trend of moving from desktop to tablet. The document says that this year will be the first year that commerce through the combined usage of smartphones and tablets will be greater than that of laptops and desktops together.

However, the report goes on to say that despite ever-growing m-commerce, contactless payment will be largely driven by card purchases.

Nonetheless, it points out that mobile transactions should be boosted by Host Card Emulation (HCE) based Near Field Communication (NFC) – which is the act of paying via touching a smartphone on the payment portal.

"While we are now seeing contactless transactions scaling up in markets such as Australia, Poland and the UK, almost all current consumer usage is via the card," said report author Dr Windsor Holden.

"However, with banks increasingly attracted to an NFC model in which they have full control of the customer, then we may well see some high-profile deployments in the medium term."