For NFC, A Waiting Game

  The ability to use mobile phones to initiate contactless Near Field Communication payments is coming. It just might take awhile to arrive. And it likely will arrive more quickly in some countries than in others.
  As this month’s cover story by Dan Balaban, C&P international bureau chief, points out, China and Austria are the only countries thus far to move out of the trial stage for NFC payments.
  Expect 2009 to be NFC’s breakout year. At least that’s what some experts are saying.
  Martin Ferenczi, U.S. CEO for France-based smart card vendor Oberthur, tells C&P sister publication CardLine Global that NFC payments in the Americas likely will lag behind Asia and Europe this year as the technology undergoes more tests around the world in advance of hoped-for rollouts.
  â€œBut I have no doubt the (Americas) will catch up or overtake” those regions, Ferenczi says.
  In most countries, NFC will take time to develop for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that so many different players are involved. Because there is revenue to be made, each wants a piece of the action.
  Among the difficult tasks is determining how much each party in the NFC chain can charge. Moreover, consumers are not demanding the technology; the card brands and chip makers are working to create the market.
  But the card brands and chip makers need the cooperation of the mobile-handset makers to put the NFC chips in their phones. And the handset makers are hesitant to do so until they see a market demand.
  Sound familiar? It’s the same chicken-or-the-egg type of problem that has hampered smart card programs, and even basic contactless card rollouts, in the United States and some other countries.
  But NFC, which enables two-way communication with other contactless chips–imagine using a phone to access a movie trailer from a chip embedded in a poster or a coupon from a newspaper ad–seems to make more practical sense than a basic smart card, at least for marketers.
  The question is, will consumers be enamored with NFC?
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