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The Future of Mobile Payments and NFC is Bright (Infographic)

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An infographic from G+ says that by 2014 half of all mobile phones will have the ability to make mobile payments through built-in Near Field Communications chips, or NFC.

Split into three parts, the infographic shows where the mobile payments market is going, who is in the race and how NFC works. NFC is quickly becoming a big deal thanks to the introduction of Google Wallet, an NFC enabled app that will let you pay for items with your NFC equipped smartphone.

Infographic of Mobile Payments

While this is a popular feature in many international locations, the US market lags far behind. Personally, the concept is appealing but a concern due to security issues. How hard or easy is it for people to grab the data from your phone’s NFC and empty your bank account or run up a big bill? With all the potential security concerns today, something new like this is harder for us to adopt.

The amazingly short-range at which these work (a few centimeters) means that someone would have to get really close to you in order to access your NFC device. Making sure that you have to actively approve an NFC payment will also help. Many of the apps require the use of a PIN to turn the NFC feature on, giving the user control of their security.

Some recent smartphones with NFC capability include the Google Nexus S, some versions of the delayed Samsung Galaxy S II and the Nokia N9 (which is expected later this year). Other Android phones with NFC are coming later this year, and Google made a big deal about it at Google I/O with a workshop title “how to NFC”.

UPDATE: A newer version of the infographic was added because it reflects that American Express Serve does support Visa, Mastercard and Discover.

Source: Mashable

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    07/10/2011 at 10:54 pm

    There were similar proclamations made about NFC years ago and we didn’t reach that plateau. If not careful NFC functionality will fragment with custom add-ons being created for different platforms in order to extend the usefulness of NFC. Mobile payments might get all the attention regarding NFC but it is useful well beyond that.

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