Apple makes decision to not include NFC chip in latest phone.
The future for NFC and Mobile Payments has a variety of different companies involved. And here in the US, Isis seems to have a lead over other competitors by signing up Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile for their services. This association should further the future for the Mobile Wallet and the use of your mobile smart phone as a way to make payments. The process has been slowly making its way towards the mainstream process. But the release of the iPhone 5 without the necessary Near Field Communications (NFC) chip threatens that future. It would seem Apple has, with the omission, impacted the forward progress of NFC because of their popularity in the US.
Does this mean that NFC payments are going to be delayed? The answer to that is Yes, but the question of just how much it will be slowed is unknown. There is the possibility that Bluetooth could be configured to handle mobile payments for the iPhone. But for now that options does not exist. It makes one wonder why Apple decided to not include the NFC chip in their phone. Just as they did a year ago when they did not include the 4G LTE chips in the iPhone 4S, it appears they believe that NFC is not yet ready for prime time. Given they do extensive research, they are probably right and a year from now things may be more settle.
Even the Olypmics decided not to use Mobile Payments because they were not fast enough in processing transactions. That would tend to indicate that there is far more work to be done to move Mobile Payments and NFC into prime time for consumers.
In a survey by CreditDonkey.com, it seems that people are not yet ready to completely trust the idea of the Mobile Wallet. There is more of a trust in making credit card payments to Amazon (60%) over others with PayPal coming in second at 30%. Payments to Google and Bing with a credit card rate quite low in the survey.
While a large percentage of people use their smart phone to price comparison shop, it is a big leap from that to using your smart phone to make a purchase. And it does not look like that situation is going to change over the next year. The shift in being confident in using a smart phone and a Mobile Wallet is going to take far longer than realized. Things should have been mainstream at the beginning of the year, but that has not happened. And there are still too many players fighting for a piece of the action and standards still to be completed. It definitely looks like a year from now is more realistic.
Do you trust the idea of a Mobile Wallet?
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