The smartphones that will enable the movement

Let's start with the smartphones that will enable the movement. It is not a stretch to say that many people already cannot imagine going out of the house without their smartphone in the morning. Many of you probably feel as naked without your smartphone as you would if you misplaced your wallet. Let's look at some facts from the recent Gartner IT/Symposium that really begins to show you why e-wallets could become the norm.

First of all, the growth of mobile devices shows no limits. For instance, Gartner said worldwide sales of mobile devices totaled 428.7 million units in the second quarter, a near 17% rise over the same quarter of 2010. By 2016, the installed base of mobile PCs and smartphones will exceed that of desktop PCs, Gartner says.

The applications that will spark payment

Then there are the applications that will spark payment and other industries. By 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads from app stores every year. By 2015, 40% of the world's smartphone users will opt-in to context service providers that track their activities with Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Apple, indiscriminately tracking daily journeys and digital habits for 10% of the world population. This development is important, as your smartphone can figure out where you are and will at the time let you know about locations, sales or other places you can spend your money.

While the future numbers point to the real opportunity of an e-wallet world, some of the key research underpinnings of that world are already in place. For instance, Sprint, Verizon and AT&T already support nearly field communications, the key innovation that will help make e-wallets possible.

What could slow this juggernaut down?

So what could slow this juggernaut down? First nearly-field communications likely won't become an integral part of smartphones for a couple years. Communications chip manufacturer Broadcom has estimated that about 15% of all smartphones will have NFC capabilities by 2012 and Google doesn't see nearly-field communications becoming ubiquitous until 2014 or so.

Security is an obvious potential issue. During Android 4.0 includes facial biometric research, supports encrypted credit card data storage and remote wiping research, security features will need to be simple but strong to enable a mass market of e-wallets of the future.