Thinking of investing in mobile-payment companies? Your timing may be perfect.

That's the message behind the latest numbers from eMarketer, released last week.

Next year, the research firm says Americans will use their phones to buy $27.05 billion worth of goods in brick-and-mortar stores, up 210% from $8.71 billion this year. The number of Americans making regular in-store mobile payments will also take a big leap skyward: up 61.8%, from 23.2 million to 37.5 million.

The trend is getting a big push from tech giants like Apple and Google,which are throwing their weight behind it through tap-and-pay systems such as Apple Pay and Android Pay. Start-ups like soon-to-be publicSquare are also in the mix. 

Meantime, retailers are swapping out their point-of-sale systems for new ones with the latest chip-reading technology. According to Berg Insight, 80% of point-of-sale (POS) systems shipped in North America last year supported near field communication (NFC), the protocol that lets smartphones running Apple Pay and Android Pay "talk" to POS terminals.

eMarketer's findings jibe with the latest figures from research firm IDC, released in August, which forecast a 124% jump in the total value of worldwide mobile transactions, from just under $500 billion in 2015 to $1 trillion in 2017. Much of that growth will come in emerging markets, where mobile phones are catching on more quickly than credit and debit cards.

That's to say nothing of the 60% of adults in the developing world who have no bank account at all. Instead of wandering into the nearest branch to set one up, they're increasingly looking to their phones to transfer money and pay bills.

Here are three companies leading the charge from "old-school" credit and debit cards to purchases through smartphones and, increasingly, wearables.

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MA

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MasterCard Inc. (MA) - Get Report

MasterCard has long been ahead of the mobile-payment curve: you'll already find its PayPass contactless payment system at countless North American stores and gas stations. In 2013, it followed up with its MasterPass digital wallet, which speeds up online checkouts by storing your payment and shipping info in one spot.

MasterCard isn't stopping there. Last week, it took aim at Apple Pay and Android Pay with a plan to dramatically expand mobile payments beyond smartphones to, well, just about anything you can think of.

Through a partnership with NXP Semiconductors the co-inventor of NFC, and chipmaker Qualcomm,MasterCard aims to wire up everything from jewelry to key fobs for mobile payments. The first ones are slated for rollout next year.

Meantime, the company sits in an enviable spot as mobile payments take off in developing countries: in the third quarter, 73% of its transactions came from outside the U.S.: 20% were made in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions, while 9% were in Latin America.

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PYPL

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PayPal Holdings (PYPL) - Get Report

PayPal is a long-time online- and mobile-payment specialist. The company started out in 1998, at the leading edge of the dot-com boom, when it was called Confinity. eBay Inc. snapped it up shortly after its 2002 IPO, then spun it off, effective July 20, 2015.

According to its just-released earnings report, PayPal processed 1.22 billion transactions, or 27 per active account, in its fiscal fourth quarter, up from 24 per account a year ago. It also handled 345 million mobile transactions, up 38% year-over-year.

In September, it bolstered its presence in physical stores through a deal with Macy's that will let shoppers buy goods at cash registers in Macy's and Bloomingdale's locations using the PayPal or Macy's app.

And on July 6 -- just two weeks before it started trading as a separate firm -- PayPal announced it would buy online money-transfer serviceXoom Inc. in an $890-million deal. The move puts the company in the thick of the growing market for remittances, where people working abroad send money home to their families in developing nations.

PayPal may have also caught lightning in a bottle with its September 2013 acquisition of Venmo, a popular app twenty-somethings use to transfer money to one another.

Venmo handled $2.1 billion of transfers in the latest quarter, up dramatically from under $1 billion a year ago. The company now plans to let users make purchases through Venmo anywhere PayPal is accepted. It will, of course, charge the usual fees attached to its core service.

Here are some takeaways from the company's first post-eBay earnings report. 

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SBUX

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Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) - Get Report

Starbucks is arguably the quickest U.S. retailer to adopt new technologies -- and nowhere has that been truer than in mobile payments.

Mobile-device payments now account for 21% of all transactions at Starbucks' U.S. locations, and adoption of the company's mobile app rose at a 32% year-over-year clip in the U.S. and Canada during its fiscal 2015 fourth quarter.

Mobile-payment growth benefits Starbucks in a couple of ways: 1) by boosting the company's loyalty rewards program, which boasted 28% more members in the U.S. and Canada at the end of the fourth quarter than a year ago; and 2) by speeding up checkout lines, thereby capturing customers who might have otherwise walked away.

To that latter point, the company began rolling out its "mobile order and pay" service in the U.S. on September 22. With it, customers can order and pay for their Starbucks brew ahead of time and simply pick it up at their preferred location, cutting out lines entirely.

The service is already seeing a run rate of more than five million transactions a month, CEO Howard Schultz said after Starbucks reported overall fourth quarter earnings that were in line with analysts' expectations last week.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for a hot tech stock to own in 2016, click here now for a full report.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.