Mobile Commerce Daily took a look at Near Field Communication (NFC) chips, the technology that powers the tap-to-pay capabilities behind mobile payments. With both Isis and Google wallets struggling to gain traction with this technology, the article explores whether this technology will ever take off.
Pervasive’s Managing Director, Brian Stein, was quoted in the article:
“Google, Isis and others have faced resistance in their NFC wallet efforts at almost every turn,” Pervasive Path’s Mr. Stein said. “From carriers blocking access to the NFC chips, low penetration of NFC readers and merchant acceptance, to poor consumer education and adoption.
“Unless something can break that cycle, NFC will become just another great technology that could have been,” he said.
“Will future generations of consumers be carrying around pieces of paper and plastic to make payments? Of course not, but we’re too early in the game to predict what that future will look like. For this reason, merchants shouldn’t rush to be early adopters of any one technology and should rather focus on creating flexible technology solutions/interfaces and leveraging intermediaries who can shield them from some of the change.”
It is unlikely that NFC will reach mass adoption without some “new” value proposition to drive usage. As it currently stands, the tap to pay capabilities are broken in a good portion of integrated card swipe and NFC readers deployed. Merchants don’t care that they are broken, because there is no demand for usage, so they aren’t reporting the issues to the terminal vendors and the problems continue to persist. Unless something can break that cycle, NFC will become just another great technology that could have been.
