China and India lead the world in the number of proximity mobile payment users, and that's primarily due to an explosion of newly minted middle-class consumers eschewing credit cards in favor of easier to use mobile options.
More than two-thirds of proximity mobile payment users reside in China and India. In fact, when excluding those countries, the percentage of smartphone users worldwide using payment apps falls from 36.0% to 16.6%*.
Across most markets, the mobile payment landscape is fragmented with a number of competing services, as evidenced in our recent report "Global Proximity Mobile Payment Users." Players like Apple, Google and Samsung have struggled to gain widespread acceptance from consumers and retailers in Western countries.