More than third of Danes, Swedes will tap phone at POS in 2018

More than a third of smartphone users in Denmark (38.9%) and Sweden (33.8%) will use their phones to pay for goods or services at a point of sale (POS) at least once a month in 2018, according to consultancy eMarketer in its first proximity mobile payment forecast. These rates put Denmark and Sweden in second and third places worldwide, behind only China, it said.

Danish penetration is among the highest in the world thanks to MobilePay, owned by Danske Bank and launched in 2013 originally as a peer-to-peer (P2P) service. Since then, MobilePay has added in-store proximity payments, helping to drive growth. By 2021, eMarketer expects more than 42 percent of smartphone users in Denmark will use proximity mobile payments. 

In Sweden, Swish was founded in 2012 as a P2P service, and this helped adoption of in-store mobile payments there. EMarketer estimates that the proximity mobile payment market in Sweden grew by nearly 79 percent in 2017. 

Jasmine Enberg, forecasting analyst at eMarketer, said that MobilePay has become so mainstream in Denmark that it is now considered one of the three most important mobile apps in the country, along with Facebook and Facebook Messenger.