Before the iPhone 5 was released, one of the features that topped the speculations list was Near Field Communications (NFC) in the phone. Apple however seems to have overlooked this for the iPhoen 5 but that apparently will not have too much of an impact on the growth of contactless payments according to experts. According to Sebastien Tormos, director at Datacard, who was speaking in Sydney a while ago, it was originally thought that if the iPhone was NFC enabled, it would surely boost the growth of contactless payments and other related technologies but its absence apparently won’t make too much of a difference.
It was originally rumored that the iPhone 5 would be NFC enabled with the necessary hardware and this was one of the main aspects in which it would compete with the Galaxy SIII but when the phone was unveiled, the rumors turned out to be false. Datacard works with payment technologies for financial organizations and it has been working with NFC enabled payments and in fact, several banks have teamed up with it to try new avenues with the Galaxy SIII. Though the iPhone makes for a dominant share of the smartphone market, Tormos doesn’t think it will be a particular hindrance to the growth of NFC technology. This is probably because he believes that Android phones are growing rapidly and that NFC technology has fostered partnerships with various hardware manufacturers to develop the needed bridge technologies. The bridges include NFC add-ons for the iPhone 4 and Datacard plans to launch one for the iPhone 5 as well.
Banks have been issuing contactless payment options to customers since a long time but the lack of adaptation has led them to obscurity. Now with NFC devices increasing, the trend has come back again and banks are encouraging using NFC devices for payments. However, there appear to be some security issues with Android phones that are NFC enabled which has prevented the facility from being offered in the applications that various banks have developed so far. The issue however can be addressed by including a secure element in the SIM card of phones with NFC users.
The real hindrance is that most people are not yet in possession of a phone with NFC capabilities and unless that becomes the norm for smartphones, the technology still has a long way to go.
October 3, 2012 at 1:10 pm
NFC is already big in EU and I think the launch of iPhone 5 won’t even hurt the current standing of the NFC platform. Anyhow, I haven’t yet tried NFC myself… I am an MPOS user, I use mPowa (previously from Square).