With P2P, bill pay and airtime top ups representing the vast majority of mobile money transactions today, mobile money service providers are keen to broaden their product offering. Merchant payments, a proximate payment from a consumer to a business at the point of sale, is a frequently discussed eWallet product extension.  The allure of this product seems to be both the size of the retail payments market and the opportunity it represents to integrate the mobile wallet deeper into everyday life. This is not a trivial point for business models based on transaction volumes.

In the preliminary analytics of the 2012 GSMA Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey, 26 out of the 53 services reported having merchant payments product on offer, which is more than those offering international remittances or microinsurance payments.

Is there a meaningful opportunity to use eWallets to pay for goods and services at shops or is this a mobile money use case which will struggle to find customer traction. If merchant payments do have potential, what is the model which will develop?

The GSMA MMU team has written a white paper on what might be the market conditions necessary for eWallet merchant payments to thrive and the strategic choices facing mobile money service providers when launching this product.

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