Anju Aggarwal, deputy director of strategy at Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) Group, said mobile payments is a "new opportunity" for market players, citing a KPMG study in April that predicted global mobile payments industry to hit US$900 billion by 2015. She was speaking during a panel discussion held during the CommunicAsia trade fair here on Wednesday.

The opportunities are created because more customers are paying their bills and doing more banking activities on their mobile devices, she added.

However, service providers continue to be hampered by longstanding issues such as lack of insight on consumer behavior as well as regulatory and security challenges. Aggarwal said that without knowing customers' full buying behavior, this would hinder efforts to develop value-added mobile payments services for them such as loyalty programs or discounts for the retail outlets they frequent.

Shirish Wadivkar, global product head of deposits & payments at Standard Chartered Bank's group retail banking products department, added that regulatory challenges for companies persist in developed countries.