“The idea of turning your mobile smartphone into a mobile wallet is an appealing one. There is no device that spends as much time in our personal proximity than a mobile phone, much more than wallets,” reports Douglas Orr. Here are 5 reasons why mobile will get mainstream adoption this year:

1. Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC technology when included in your mobile phone enables a secure connection between the phone and another NFC enabled device. As a consumer you might use this to get more information about an offer on a product by tapping an NFC enabled shelf price tag (much easier than a bar code). More excitingly, you may be able to make your purchases at the check-out.

2. Apple’s iPhone 5. A simple tick of the upgrade box and your iTunes account is now an iWallet. This device is also expected to support NFC. In fact: in light of all of the patents that Apple have filed for novel uses of NFC technology to pay for everything from entertainment tickets to intelligent checkout baskets some belief that NFC and payments will be the focus of Apple’s new phone.

3. Mobile Wallets. True wallet functionality that enables small purchases is being rolled out in 2011 by a variety of operators, manufactures and others. You will be able to not only make purchases but also split a restaurant bill and transfer money to a friend in a way that is easy and fun.

4. Affordable mobile solutions for retailers. Platforms are now available that enable a technical integration with existing online solutions that are affordable, easy to implement yet secure. The transaction costs are also coming down to a level in line with other existing payment solutions. Leading players in this space to watch include PayPal, Cardinal Commerce, PayThru and Monetise.

5.VC Investment There are truly colossal sums of investment being made by VCs large and small on the mobile space. Mobile VC investment made up 34% of ALL tech venture investment in 2010, totalling $6.1bn.

Read three more reasons here. Do you think wallets will become as redundant as wristwatches? Or does the mobile market still have a ways to go?