Juniper says in its latest report on near-field communication usage in smartphones that while there is rapid growth in NFC ticketing in European markets, it has actually scaled back NFC ticketing adoption in many other markets, such as the US, India, and Africa, due to the lack of available services and infrastructure.

But, the analyst firms does say that, driven by open standards and the adoption of OEM wallets such as Apple Pay and Android Pay, mobile NFC ticketing will witness higher growth rate in comparison to mTicketing over the next five years, representing an average annual growth of 25%.

The newly published research by Juniper found that the continued failure to persuade transport operators of the NFC value proposition is proving a “severe constraint” on the sector, except in Japan and Korea where adoption has been fostered both by national alliances and cross-border co-operation.

The research also found that events ticketing will be dominated by SMS and QR codes, meaning transport ticketing, especially metro, bus and rail, will account for more than 90% of total mobile NFC tickets issued over the next five years.

Juniper also says the research found that wearables ticketing will reach US$1 billion by 2022, and observed that the future of wearable ticketing is contactless, primarily across the transport sectors.

“At present, using wearables for making ticket purchases is understandably minimal given the low penetration of capable devices, as well as the lack of supported contactless infrastructure, especially in venues and stadiums,” notes research author Nitin Bhas.

“However, with contactless vendors increasingly partnering with transit operators and events ticketing providers, Juniper forecasts that contactless tickets purchased via smart wearables will exceed US$1 billion in value by 2022.”