Following up its findings that social media will help grow online retail by double digits this year, market firm Juniper Research has released findings suggesting mobile money transfers will also increase by nearly 150 per cent.
“Several social media firms are already seeing a dramatic rise in service usage,” the company said in a statement. In 2015 alone, the amount transferred is set to reach $13 billion.
According to the report, American service provided by Venmo sees just under $1 billion per quarter. Meanwhile, Snapchat has partnered with Square, and Facebook has launched this functionality in Messenger.
Growth was not just driven by the U.S. however.
In China, messenger platform WeChat and Alipay saw 3.3 billion P2P transactions in only six days around the Chinese New Year period of February this year.
In markets including sub-Saharan Africa, more users have turned to mobile wallets than banks.
The report also stressed that network operators that are involved in delivering the service should also develop risk assessment through data and trend analytics, which could even help in credit scoring.
