Posts Tagged ‘NFC’

Fifth of Smartphones NFC enabled by 2014

One in five smartphones will feature Near Field Communications (NFC) within the next three years, according to Juniper Research. NFC, which enables among other things mobile payments, looks set to gather pace over the next three years, with one in five smartphones expected to feature the technology by 2014.

So claims research by Juniper Research that predicts there will be almost 300 million NFC-enabled smartphones in use in three years’ time. Services in early adopter countries over the next year or so will help fuel this growth, according to the research firm. North America will lead the charge come 2014 with half of all NFC smartphones, and Western Europe will take second place.

“Juniper’s market analysis highlighted that, although there are still hurdles ahead, NFC prospects have been boosted by the succession of mobile operator and device vendor announcements,” said Howard Wilcox, NFC retail marketing and mobile payments report author.

“France is a case in point where operators expect to sell one million NFC devices this year.”

Google filling mobile payments space?

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the web giant is working on a mobile payment technology system. Teaming up with Citigroup and Mastercard, Google are looking to create a mobile payment system that will turn Android phones into electronic wallets.

The new technology, which is in its early stages, will allow consumers to wave their Android phones in front of a small reader at the checkout counter to make payments, according to the report.

The planned payment system would allow Google to offer retailers more data about their customers and help them target advertisements and discount offers to mobile device users near their stores, sources told the WSJ.

Google is not expected to get a cut of the transaction fees, the paper said.

Initially, holders of Citigroup-issued debit and credit cards would be allowed to pay for purchases by activating a mobile payment application developed for one current model and many coming models of Android phones, the paper said.

Near-field communications (NFC) and mobile payments were the talk of this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona.

O2 to launch mobile wallet this year

O2 has confirmed that it will launch a mobile smartphone wallet solution in the second half of 2011. The company has defined four key services that will be offered: being able to buy products and services online via m-commerce payments, mobile money transfers from person to person, mobile pay-as-you-go top-up services and contactless payments in retail stores.

The rumour is that these four services will probably not launch at the same time, but the first will be introduced in the second half of the year and the rest will follow.

With around 40,000 contactless terminals already in the UK, in places such as Eat and McDonald’s, retailers have noticed there are some big opportunities around this technology.

A spokesperson for O2 said “Unless you get a large enough amount of NFC readers out there, consumers won’t use the service. But we will see that number rising to around 60,000 by the end of the year and the Olympics next year will provide impetus to create more readers.”