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Near Field Communication technology will be unable to offer viable, large-scale mobile-payment capabilities for at least six years because the multiple organizations involved have been slow to determine how to share the expenses and revenue, according to a recent ABI Research Inc. report. Those involved include merchants, wireless operators and card issuers, and there are multiple costs they need to cover, ABI Research senior analyst Mark Beccue tells CardLine. For example, it can cost money for the mobile carriers to put contactless chips into phones, and merchants must upgrade their point-of-sale terminals to accept NFC transactions, he says. SMS text messaging, Web-browser applications and downloadable applications have a greater potential to advance mobile commerce because they involve fewer costs, according to the Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based firm. "Consumers would, in many cases, prefer cashless transactions when away from home. So around the world, solutions providers have leveraged SMS, mobile Internet and downloadable mobile applications to enable mobile commerce and payments," says Beccue. The potential revenue of mobile transactions using the three methods in 2013 may reach $18 billion, according to Beccue. Four retail categories likely will drive mobile-payments adoption: taxis, parking, movie tickets and Internet shopping, the report says. Internet shopping would account for nearly 75% of mobile-commerce revenue in 2013, 15% would come from parking, 5% would come from taxis and 5% from movie tickets, according to the report.
