Mastercard Sees Digital Wallet Users Exceeding 6 Billion by 2030

By 2030, more than 6 billion people could be using digital wallets.

That’s according to Mastercard, which on Thursday (Sept. 10) introduced a set of solutions designed to help wallet providers offer a better user experience.

Mastercard Wallet Pay is “designed to foster interoperability and innovation” for digital wallets across contactless (NFC), QR codes and online digital payments, the company said.

“Wallets are gateways to the digital economy and launchpads for broader financial services,” Jorn Lambert, chief product officer at Mastercard, said in a news release.

“Through our Wallet Pay solutions, we’re helping payment providers to enhance the interoperability and user experience of their services, underpinned by trust, scale and convenience for the people and businesses they serve.”

According to the release, Wallet Pay Solutions are geared toward things like interoperability, allowing “smooth connections between wallets across borders, platforms and payment types.”

The solution also supports providers in introducing their own credit, debit or prepaid card programs, and allows merchants to accept payments from cards and wallets in person and online, letting more than 3.7 billion Mastercard credentials connect to digital wallets, the company said.

“With technologies like cloud-based payments and Mastercard’s global acceptance network, wallet providers can leverage Mastercard Wallet Pay and bring new use cases to life without significant changes to their infrastructure,” the release added.

Meanwhile, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research, done in collaboration with PayPal, shows that digital wallet payment preferences can play a key role in determining whether or not online shoppers abandon their carts.

“The Hidden Cost of Checkout Gaps” report estimates that close to 56 million U.S. consumers abandoned an online cart in the previous 30 days when their preferred payment method wasn’t available. Missing digital wallets made up for about 26 million of those shoppers, while buy now, pay later options were another big source of lost purchases.

As covered here Thursday, those figures place payment choice “squarely on the merchant’s growth agenda.” A customer might like the product and accept the price, though their decision can still fall apart due to payment methods. Recognizing those preferences can help merchants close gaps in their checkout experience.

“The next phase of shopping adds another reason to pay attention,” PYMNTS wrote. “Some 43% of consumers say they’d likely link a digital wallet to an AI agent for purchases within two years. Familiar payment tools could help them take that step. They also want a say in what an agent can buy and how much it can spend.”