Why are people clamouring for NFC? What are people doing with it that I don't know about! Is there some magical dimension I'm not privy to where NFC is everywhere?
Check out Nokia's accessories for Lumia 920. All of them pair with NFC and some of them even charge the phone. Without cables or connectors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4zx2xy6VjE
Yes, the magical dimension is short way forward along the 't' axis. There are a whole bunch of big NFC programmes being lined up in various countries, many backed by multiple mobile networks. In the US Isis is looking interesting and in the UK there is Project Oscar. France has Cityzi.
NFC is set to permeate many aspects of our lives, including payments, access control, transportation ticketing. It also enables some neat new marketing possibilities.
Right now the industry is solving the much talked about 'chicken and egg' situation by getting NFC handsets out there. High end phones shipping without NFC are now a rarity (which is why I'm disappointed tonight) and things are getting into position for the technology being revealed with a splash and folks finding that their existing handsets already have the right hardware that allows them to be part of the big new thing.
In short, you should be looking for NFC in your next handset not because it will be useful today or tomorrow, but because you'll be wanting it during the 18-24 month lifetime of the phone.
There is no guarantee that what's being put in phones today is going to be necessary or compatible with what ends up "winning" mobile payments. Notably last month a group of major retailers (walmart/target/711/sears/best buy...) announced they are going to push what sounds like a non-chip solution.
The MCX solution doesn't yet sound like anything and I believe it is simply a gun that is being brought along in case there is a fight over merchant fees.
There is a huge amount of work going on all over the world on putting NFC into place. It's not very visible yet, but it is happening. Notably, hardware is being quietly rolled out on both the user and merchant side. It's always possible something else might 'win' in the end, but I'd say it is increasingly unlikely...
How do I pay for something with NFC when I'm actually on the phone? And how do I pay for something if I don't have my phone. Or if my phone is out of charge. Genuine questions by the way.
If anything, it makes more sense to have NFC in a card. I'm not sure how convenient it is to have a method of payment that can run out of battery.
NFC, as it was originally envisioned, was supposed to allow for use even when the phone was without power just as the cards today are without power. In traditional RFID technology, from which NFC was derived, there was a powered transceiver (aka reader) and non-powered transponder (aka card). The promise of NFC was to be able to have a transceiver and transponder in one, where the power is derived from the inductive coupling of the antennae. You can see this by reviewing the ISO documents for ISO 14443 (RFID) and ISO 18092/ 21481 (NFC).
"David Lindberg, Executive General Manager at Commonweath Bank, shared his vision of what the future may look like and the very probably demise of ‘cash’. Already more than 50% of transactions at 7-Elevens use contactless payment methods. Only three years ago, less than one percent of financial transactions were done via a mobile phone, yet this month in Australia there will be more financial transactions completed via mobile phone than on the internet." https://innovation.govspace.gov.au/2012/09/12/an-optimistic-...
Neither credit card nor ATM-cards managed to get rid of cash. Honest question: why should NFC-paying and what does it have to offer more when compared to just using your CC or ATM card?
