The sixth remittance and mobilemoney expo begins today in Lagos, Nigeria. The forum is expected to discuss issues around lowering remittance transaction cost.

According to Emmanuel Okoegwale, event director at MobileMoneyAfrica “Africa has made great strides in mobile technology adoption and penetration; however, despite the pervasive coverage of such mobile networks across Africa, technological innovation has yet to drive down costs in Africa’s remittance markets.”

Remittance providers and stakeholders such as money transfer operators, financial services providers, financial technology providers, vendors, agent network operators, mobile financial services providers, regulators and stakeholders from the supply and demand side of the remittance industry will be meeting at the event to address lowering transaction cost by leveraging new innovations in the African mobile financial services ecosystem.

The barriers to cost-reduction, challenges and opportunities in the African remittance market, improving efficiency at the last mile, the role of non-bank financial institutions and the emergence of digital remittances such as mobile money, online transfers and crypto currencies in lowering remittance cost for Africans are some of the subject matter areas to be considered at the conference that will be held at the prestigious Lagos Oriental Hotel, Nigeria.

Meanwhile the total revenue of the worldwide mobile payment market in 2015 reached $450 billion, according to TrendForce.

The total revenue of the worldwide mobile payment market in 2015 reached $450 billion, and by the end of 2016, is estimated to arrive at $620 billion, representing growth of 37.8% year-on-year.

This is according to global market research firm TrendForce, which attributes the growth to smartphone brands Apple and Samsung making a big entrance into the mobile payment business.

Apple Pay and Samsung Pay have particularly been scrambling to China, which makes up a huge slice of the mobile payment market, says TrendForce.

It adds the rival service providers both struck a deal with government-run Chinese bank-card payment processor China UnionPay earlier this year.

This means Chinese iPhone and Samsung phone users will be able to make mobile payments this year, provided their models are of the latest generation with upgraded software, it points out.

TrendForce notes the rapid diversification of mobile payment services accelerated collaboration among the participants in the industry ecosystem; for example, financial institutions and telecom operators.

This resulted in the formation of industry-wide standards and the maturation of related technologies.

“Service charges from banks, telecom operators and third-party payment platforms constitute an enormous business opportunity in the mobile payment market,” says Kelly Hsieh, senior manager for mobile communication and end device research at TrendForce.

“However, hardware and software developers also have significant roles in the industry.”

For instance, she explains, the take-off of the mobile payment has led to the rapid market growth of fingerprint sensor chips.

“Since Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Payment incorporated fingerprint recognition into their payment verification processes, the number of smartphones that come with a fingerprint scanner has risen.

In fact, this biometric technology is now a standard feature in most mainstream smartphone models. We can expect over 40% of the smartphones worldwide will be able to read fingerprints by the end of this year.”

The research firm believes the main battlegrounds for competing mobile payment service providers will be the banking and retail sectors.

It points out large international banks have been energetically building their mobile payment networks around the globe.

Hsieh says banks will be instrumental in choosing the dominant mobile payment method in this market. Additionally, the related technologies will expand into more applications and sectors if large banks lead the collaboration between financial service providers and retailers.