Philip Yen, General Manager, Global Digital Technology Centre at Mastercard in Singapore made a bold prediction that Australia will be the global leader in mobile payments.

Speaking at FST Media’s 9th annual Technology & Innovation – The Future of Banking and Financial Services conference in Sydney, Yen said Australia has a good acceptance infrastructure for contactless payments.

“It boosts my confidence that Australia will also be the leader… because the foundation is there,” he said.
Yen told the audience that Australia has already been a global leader in contactless payment transactions for over a year now, and continues to widen the gap by a significant stretch.

He flagged Australia as a first mover in implementing many payment solutions, including being the first market to launch Samsung embedded solutions.

However, Yen said the biggest growth for mobile payments was in retail and travel, and though he suggested that mobile contactless payments will not replace card payments, he pointed to the importance of mobile.

According to Yen, the lines between the physical and online world have become blurred, enabling payments through any connected device.

“Consumers can shop with any device, and anywhere,” Yen said.

He told the delegation to expect the next stage of payments to be wearable’s, with merchants getting ready to embrace this new technology.

However, Yen said he did not expect the success of wearable’s to lead to the elimination of the physical wallet, “The world will [not] be moving toward a no-wallet situation for quite some time, but nonetheless there will be  more use for these devices for payment.”