I have been critical of many things on my blog. I have highlighted the problems with premium SMS's, Internet payments, Chip and Pin and many other approaches to solving payment problems. In the same way I have discussed problems that I see with NFC solutions (As far as I can re-collect twice: here and here)I don't think that we can ignore the growing interest in NFC payments and when today I was asked twice why I don't support NFC payments, I realised that I should post a firm position on this blog.
Card-based proximity payments is nothing new. We have stirling examples of these having been deployed successfully. I am the proud owner of a Oyster Card myself (even though I don't live in London). I really enjoy seeing how seamless everything work, each time I have to use the underground.
So here is my position: To merely replicate these kind of payments by replacing the card with a mobile phone does not add much value, and I believe that most business cases will be rickety. If we were to utilise the new NFC capabilities in phones, I think it is critical to be much more innovative about these features. Some of the things that we should possibly develop (not an exhaustive list) is:
- On phone wallet applications
- Phone to phone NFC interaction (I personally think that this is one potential killer app)
- OTA issuing (another killer, but extremely complex and challenging)
- Mobile data interactions between the application on the phone and back-office