• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 11, 2013

Separate and apart from the purchase of goods on a mobile device, “proximity mobile payments” -- which require consumers to scan, tap, swipe or check in with a mobile phone at the point of sale -- are officially big business.

Despite growth that is slower than previously expected, proximity mobile payments will top $1 billion domestically this year, according to new estimates from eMarketer.

Even more impressive, eMarketer expects proximity payments to reach roughly $58 billion by 2017.

Remarkably, small purchases like lattes from Starbucks are driving these numbers -- along with an increase in bigger-ticket purchases, which more than tripled from 2011 to $539 million in 2012, eMarketer estimates.

Despite this promising outlook, eMarketer had to scale back estimates of user adoption and transaction value from initial projections in late 2012. The slower growth is being blamed on delays and adoption issues facing various mobile wallet initiatives, not to mention a crowded (and confusing) landscape of competing technologies.

Low-value purchases will still comprise the majority of transactions in 2013, causing a dip in the growth rate.

In the near term, light users experimenting with low-dollar purchases will dominate the mobile payment audience, while a smaller segment of heavy users who habitually buy their daily coffee, for example, with a mobile payment system will increase over the forecast period.

Those factors will prevent the market for proximity payments from exceeding $20 billion until 2016, according to eMarketer. The research firm’s previous forecast predicted mobile payments would top $20 billion by 2015.