Marketwatch: Potential Big Winners in a Mobile Payments Future

Mobile payments are still a fairly young market, but we’re already starting to see some shakeouts in the field as competitors depart the field. Marketwatch recently offered up a look at some of the potentially biggest winners in stocks if a cashless future should ever come around, a development that might actually be more likely than we think.

The market is a major one by any stretch; eMarketer’s recent estimates expect peer-to-peer (P2P) payments systems to reach $120 billion in transactions this year alone, and by 2021, that number should double.

Naturally, credit card firms would win big here, which is why Marketwatch points to Visa and Mastercard as huge beneficiaries of a cashless future. Many mobile payments platforms have at least a connection to a credit or debit card in one way or another, and these two are the biggest forces in the credit / debit card sector.

Payment platforms are the next major winners, and Marketwatch looks to Apple, Alibaba, Square and PayPal to be top of the heap here. Not surprising either; PayPal has longevity on its side as well as rapid diversification of late—we’ve been following that point for months now—as well as eBay’s ear for at least the next few years. Apple has its walled garden of devoted users, and Alibaba likewise, except Alibaba’s is much, much bigger since it encompasses all of China. Square has also pulled in plenty of interest.

Finally, there’s Fiserv. A lesser-known entity, Fiserv has the un-sexy but thoroughly necessary job of offering the platform for financial businesses to push into fintech and offer up new services.

It’s hard to find fault with Marketwatch’s projections; all of these firms have already done well in mobile payments and will likely continue to do so, barring some kind of calamity. Betting on current successes to continue being successes isn’t exactly long odds. Sure, it’s possible that some dark-horse or some out-of-nowhere upstart will unseat at least one of these seven, but all seven is a long shot on par with betting that the sun will go out tomorrow.

Marketwatch’s lineup of likely winners in a cashless future is indeed likely. What you do with that information, though, is up to you.