Mass adoption of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is still a distant dream, Paypal’s director of communications Anuj Nayar was quoted as saying by a website.
NFC is a short wave wireless technology which is expected to make the mobile wallet system a reality. Mobile wallets, once come into picture, would eliminate the need of credit/debit cards. But, for that not only the mobile phones should have the NFC capability but also the shopping outlets must have NFC enabled readers.
According to the PayPal executive, changing the merchant behaviour is a big challenge for the NFC service providers.
Recently, Google has launched its mobile payments platform – Google Wallet. Also, many significant companies such as HTC, LG, Motorola, RIM, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, are putting their weight behind NFC.
Credit Card companies are also making investment in NFC. Master Card is already partnering Google Wallet and the company believes it is going to be five to ten year effort, so even the participants in the NFC game are in it for the long haul.
Even Nokia has launched some smartphones with the NFC capability in India.
Even Paypal had joined the NFC fun by launching phone to phone money transfer App sometime back. Using this app in a NFC enabled phones one user initiates the money transfer by tapping an icon on the home screen of his Android phone while keeping the other phone close to it. When both the phones vibrate, a PIN has to be entered on the second device which will initiate money transfer.