Enthusiasm about near field communications will be more muted in 2012 and most likely 2013, as mobile payments attention shifts to other ways to enable payments, loyalty and credentials programs and mobile commerce.In fact, 2012 will see much more attention paid to a range of other ways of handling the communications, credentials storage and commerce applications. The reason is simple enough: NFC simply has not gotten enough marketplace traction, and ecosystem participants are eager to move ahead.
It was inevitable that hype around near field communications would begin to ebb. That happens with all important new technologies. And one might argue the hype around NFC reached a peak in 2011.
Instead, we will likely see growing interest in cloud-based wallet solutions that can be used by current point-of-sale system, rather than requiring the use of a mobile phone.
PayPal, First Data and Visa are among the “big names” promoting retail solutions that do not require mobile phone involvement, and further integrate with online and possibly other devices such as connected game playing units or even video set-top boxes at some point.
Beyond that, the focus has broadened beyond the payment function, in part because of the time and expense required to create scalable solutions, and in part because the value of mobile payments, in a narrow sense, has yet to prove itself in the U.S. market.
Also, in an attempt to find a winning value proposition that drives massive end user and retailer uptake, most ecosystem participants are looking at any number of broader value propositions with elements of marketing, advertising, location-based couponing and dynamic inventory management, not just “payments.”
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