Digital Lifescapes

Online payment solution development continues to evolve. To date, blockchain has had a mixed impact across payments and banking, but the rise of Stablecoin and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will accelerate the impact. Fundamentally, Stablecoins and CBDCs are two ways of solving the same inherent problem -- how to offer a better and more trusted digital payments solution. To date, most existing payment types have been designed around traditional systems intended for in-person or telephone payments, such as credit cards, or even cash. Therefore, Stablecoins and CBDCs are providing a system that's a significant payment use case transformation. Digital Payment Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, the value of payments via CBDCs will reach $213 billion annually by 2030 -- that's up from just $100 million in 2023. However, this significant market growth opportunity of over 260,000 percent reflects the early stage of the sector,...

Much of the initial interest in cryptocurrencies centered around their potential as alternatives to fiat currencies. Increasingly, however, attention has shifted to the potential of the technology that underpins them: blockchain. A clear indication of blockchain’s increasing maturity is the extent to which an industry that was once the preserve of fintech start-ups is now being driven by leading IT platform providers -- many of whom are developing their own offerings. Blockchain Market Development A number have been involved in joint ventures and consortia while at the same time developing their own solutions. For example, IBM unveiled Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) for developers in February 2016 based on Hyperledger Fabric -- one of the Hyperledger blockchain framework implementations hosted by The Linux Foundation. A new worldwide market study by Juniper Research has found that the value of cryptocurrency transactions is expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2017 -- that's ...

Blockchain applications are driving significant new investment in related Internet of Things (IoT) projects. The rapidly evolving distributed ledger technology will alter established industries beyond financial services, according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research. In addition to online transactions, blockchain technology can also be used for communication, identification, ownership, and device management. Besides, with continued architecture improvements and ecosystem expansion, blockchain technology is moving into smart contracts and other promising use cases. Blockchain Apps Market Development "These pre-programmed, self-executing, autonomous contracts can be used for numerous applications, including: digital identities, governance, asset tracking, and M2M transactions, among many others," said Michela Menting, research director at ABI Research . Through these evolving IoT related technologies, blockchain can affect and perhaps transform all kind...

The emergence of Bitcoin and other alternative cryptocurrency options has the potential to significantly impact the Global Networked Economy. During the last couple of years, huge amounts of these new currencies have been traded on the dedicated exchange platforms that already launched. Meanwhile, some merchants accept Bitcoin as a payment method. And, numerous banks are now trialing the technology as a means of reducing settlement costs, while a host of other use cases -- as an example, smart contracts and secure ID verification -- are also seeing their first deployments. Blockchain Technology Market Development A new worldwide market study by Juniper Research has found that the total value of Venture Capital (VC) investment into blockchain technologies and Bitcoin companies totaled $290 million in the first 6 months of 2016, with more than thirty startups receiving funding during that time. More than a third of all VC investment was accounted for by three companies: Circle -...

While most people in developed markets around the world prefer online digital banking, some customers still prefer an in-branch session -- when compared to the potential for a long wait during a voice call to the bank's customer service center. Today, given the options, the outlook is more likely to be centered on leveraging smartphone adoption, as banks move to a mobile channel approach to customer service automation -- it's a trend supported by the ongoing decline of physical bank branches. According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, over 1 billion smartphone users will have used their devices for banking purposes by the end of this year. This global user base is forecast to reach 2 billion by 2020, by which time it will represent 37 percent of the global adult population. Growth in adoption has been particularly aggressive in emerging markets, leading Juniper to revise their prior estimate upwards. Under their revised forecasts, mobile banking u...

The emergence of Bitcoin and an array of alternative cryptocurrencies over the past 5 years has been one of the true phenomena of global eCommerce. Initially a purely person-to-person mechanism, cryptocurrencies are increasingly being offered by online retailers as purchasing options. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, the number of active Bitcoin users worldwide will reach 4.7 million by the end of 2019 -- that's up from just over 1.3 million in 2014. However, the findings from the study also reveal that usage will continue to be dominated by exchange trading, with retail adoption largely restricted to relatively niche demographics. While a number of high profile retailers are enabling Bitcoin payment, activity levels from both online and offline deployments are extremely low. Of course, growth in new user adoption could change, over time. "While average daily transaction volumes have increased by around 50 percent since March 2014, the indicati...