PayPal doubles mobile payment projections to $3 billion for 2011

The new figure is the third time the company has updated it volume forecasts for 2011. At an analysts day in February, the company upped its projections to $2 billion, from the $1.5 billion anticipated last Autumn.

Presenting the new figures, Laura Chambers, senior director PayPal Mobile, says: "Mobile payments are growing at a rate we never could have imagined when we started processing them back in 2006."

She says the company is now seeing up to $10 million in mobile transaction processing volume a day - a sharp incline from the $6 million reported in March.

"We currently have eight million customers who are regularly making purchases on their mobile phones, up from a previously reported six million users," says Chambers.

The latest growth projections come at a time of booming commercial investment in mobile commerce and payments.

Speaking at Cannes, Wednesday, Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, said he expected that up to a third of eftpos terminals in the US would be capable of processing mobile payments within the year, spawning a "trillion dollar industry".