I really respect individuals that are prepared to say things the way they see it and not the way that they think people want to hear it. In a recent article Sandy Shen, a research director for Gartner made very valid points (that I think should be made - even thought these may be unpopular).It seems that consumers really like NFC payments and that they would want to have this deployed quickly. The ease of use and the intuitive application seems to be exactly what consumers want, but huge barriers still exist before this will be a viable solution.
- It is unclear how the business case would work for the deployment of NFC payments, or as Sandy described it: "...that there is no convincing business case for either banks or mobile phone operators,"
- Availability of handsets remains a significant problem. Estimates of the number of handsets that will be NFC enabled keeps declining year by year. Sandy says: “The handset vendors are sitting on the sidelines to see how the market will pick up.”
- Lastly the perceived security remains a big stumbling block.