NFC (Near Field Communication) technology will facilitate transactions valued at $74bn (£47bn) by 2015, as NFC is increasingly used to pay for goods in store, and for transport ticketing. This is over treble the estimated value of this market in 2011.

The figures come from a new study from Juniper Research, which concludes that the increasing use of mobile devices as an alternative to credit cards and paper tickets is one of the fastest-growing segments of the mobile commerce market.

The Mobile Commerce Markets report shows that the rapid adoption of mobile devices for commerce-related applications is by no means limited to NFC. All segments – including money transfers, banking, payments and coupons – are forecast to exhibit significant growth rates.

“Our report demonstrates the spectacular growth we see across all segments of the mobile commerce market,” says report author, David Snow. “Four of these segments (money transfer, physical goods, NFC and coupons) will more than treble in transaction value over the next three years, whilst digital goods, banking and tickets will still on average, double over the same period.”

The Juniper report cautions, however, that mobile commerce providers need to keep security issues in mind. Even if there is a perceived, if not actual, security risk in the mind of users, not only the specific mobile commerce application, but also the whole mobile commerce market may be set back until user trust is recovered.

The report also finds that SMS is key to widespread mobile banking service adoption Without interoperability, says Juniper, mobile money transfer services will struggle to gain a critical mass of users. Whilst mobile coupons still represent the smallest mobile commerce segment, they are demonstrating the highest growth rate. The new Juniper report features segment level assessments of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, NFC, mobile money transfer and remittances, mobile ticketing, mobile coupons and mobile banking. The study pinpoints the key market drivers and constraints and sizes all seven mobile commerce market segments through global five year forecasts of gross transaction values.

A Mobile Commerce whitepaper is available to download from the Juniper website, together with further details of the study.