More NFC Options, Still Much Confusion

Visa's recent investment in mobile payments enabler Square, coupled with the recent Isis decision to back off creating a brand-new retail payments infrastructure, suggests the market is moving faster now, so much faster than Isis cannot afford to spend years, and lots of money, to create a new mass market payments brand.

Square also suggests the ways much mobile payments innovation will happen: extending payments functionality into retail segments where it has been difficult and expensive to take the existing approaches.

Charge Anywhere has taking a similar tack, supporting payments using iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices to process credit card payments with their phones and a dedicated reader to swipe the cards.

But the latest version to the software can turn a near field communications device into a full mobile payment terminal without the use of an external dongle. The solution requires an existing merchant payment account.

The new capability allows NFC-equipped credit or debit cards to communicate directly with the Charge Anywhere-equipped mobile device without any need to "swipe" a card.

The larger issue, though, is whether the NFC payments infrastructure can grow fast enough to take market share before other communication methods get traction. Square seems to be doing just fine using the old "swipe" method.

App turns Google Nexus phone into payment tool | Android Atlas - CNET Reviews