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"Though the market is growing more slowly than previously projected, an eMarketer report predicts that mobile payments in the United States will break the $1 billion barrier this year and then hit $58 billion by 2017.\nThe eMarketer study defines such payments as \"transactions for goods or services made by scanning, tapping, swiping or checking in with a mobile phone at the point of sale.\" They differ from mobile commerce, which is defined as purchasing items on a mobile device. The researcher predicts mobile commerce sales will hit $38.4 billion this year.  \nSEE ALSO: Ecommerce Site Lets You Search for Clothes by Uploading Photos\n\nMobile payments hit a snag over the last year or so and eMarketer accordingly scaled back earlier estimates for growth. No single mobile payment system has taken off \u2014 instead, there's a \"congested landscape of competing technologies.\" That will check growth until 2016 or so, the eMarketer report suggets. After that, it will take off. \n\nDelays and adoption issues facing numerous mobile wallet initiatives, as well as the aforementioned congested landscape of competing technologies, materially affect eMarketer's outlook on mobile payment transaction values, which will not top $20 billion until 2016. Another factor suppressing growth is the nature of payments, which tend to be very small. Such low-value purchases for now include a daily cup of coffee, a factor doubtlessly buoyed by Starbucks' embrace of mobile payments. However, eMarketer believes that consumers will soon begin using their mobile devices to make bigger purchases.\nThe eMarketer report dubs NFC \u2014 near field communication that lets you pay by simply waving your phone in the direction of a reader device \u2014 as a \"wild card\":\nOn the one hand, NFC-enabled hardware continues to proliferate. On the other hand, U.S. mobile payment platforms reliant on NFC have, so far, failed to gain traction among consumers and merchants even as other methods and technologies have picked up steam. The failure of large-scale mobile payment schemes to take root in 2012 put many merchants and consumers in a \"wait-and-see\" mode, resulting in lowered estimates.\nWould you use your mobile device to pay for big-ticket items? Let us know in the comments below.\nImage via iStockphoto, Hakusan"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/07/11/mobile-payments-1-billion/>