Smart watches, fitness trackers and payment wristbands will soon be buying consumers’ goods. According to a new report released by Tractica, a market intelligence firm focused on human interaction with technology, wearable payment transaction volume is expected to grow from $3.1 billion in 2015 to $501.1 billion worldwide by 2020.
And those wearable payments will account for roughly 20 percent of the total mobile proximity transaction volume and approximately 1 percent of total cashless transactions in retail five years from now.
“Wearable payments are just getting started,” says Tractica research director Aditya Kaul.
Industry participants and consumer acceptance from early trials and deployments have helped motivate some of the biggest names in technology and banking to continue to develop the mobile payment market, according to the report.
“Apple Pay for the Apple Watch is the first big effort at enabling payments with the wrist. Soon to be launched, Android Pay and Samsung Pay are other prominent digital wallet solutions that will support smart watch payments,” Kaul added. “Key early market initiatives include trials and deployments of Barclays’ bPay system in the United Kingdom, Swatch’s partnership with UnionPay to enable wearable payments, Alipay’s partnership with Xiaomi in China, and Disney’s successful deployment of its MagicBand closed-loop payment and ticketing system at its theme parks, among others.”