Another week, another forecast that mobile payments will eventually see impressive growth even though adoption is muted at present. This time, the prediction is from analysts at BCC Research in Wellesley, Mass. According to their new study, the global market for mobile wallet technologies will reach nearly $665 billion in 2017. That's a five-year compound annual growth rate of 142 percent from a market valued at nearly $8 billion in 2012.

The BCC Research study also predicts that the highest growth rate for mobile wallets through 2017 will occur in the Asia Pacific region.

That $665 billion is actually smaller than global predictions from other analysts. (See forecasts from IDC Research and Heavy Reading Mobile Networks Insider). This could be because BCC Research counts mobile wallets as a distinct submarket of mobile payments in general. As defined by BCC Research in its report, "mobile wallet transactions are carried through an exclusive mobile wallet account, in which a user has a user code and password." A mobile payment, on the other hand, is considered a transaction that is paid directly through an individual’s bank account, debit or credit account.

That distinction means mobile payments has an even larger potential, but it also means mobile wallets will eventually fill a larger need for consumers than simply making a transaction happen.

"The key objective of the mobile wallet is to facilitate a user with an electronic wallet in which all the contents of a real wallet such as cash and cards are electronically available at any time and anywhere," BCC Research said in an announcement.

According to the report, an important driver for money transfers through mobile wallets will be a transaction without an Internet connection, meaning that the technology will be opened those in rural areas as well as the unbanked.

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