There is much buzz around the growth of mobile payments in the United States, with predictions that it will hit $214 billion by 2014, according to Aite Group. But which of the many possible approaches — including integrated NFC, non-integrated contactless, bar codes, cloud-based solutions, and text messaging — is the best choice?
The Smart Card Alliance today released a white paper entitled, “The Mobile Payments and NFC Landscape: A U.S. Perspective.”
The white paper provides an overview of the current state of the market for mobile payments and NFC-enabled payment applications in the U.S., and evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of different mobile payment approaches.
“Technology is always changing, especially within the mobile and payments industries, so it is difficult to predict when and how mobile payments will become commonplace in the United States,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. “The goal of this white paper is to help industry stakeholders understand the current mobile payments landscape, anticipate how mobile payments are likely to change, and appreciate the opportunities that mobile payments, and particularly NFC-enabled mobile contactless payments, present.”
Some of the topics covered in this snapshot of mobile payments include:
- A description of the different types of mobile financial applications in use today
- Discussion of the different mobile payments approaches with implementation examples
- A summary of the merchant, consumer, issuer, and mobile operator requirements for NFC mobile proximity payments and the attendant benefits
- An update on the status of Near-Field Communications (NFC) mobile proximity payments infrastructure
- Evaluation of how different mobile payment approaches fulfill overall market requirements
Payments Council members involved in the development of this white paper included: Accenture; American Express; Apriva; Bank of America; Capgemini; Capital One; Connexem Consulting; CPI Card Group; Datacard Group; DeviceFidelity; Discover Financial Services; Gemalto; Giesecke & Devrient; Heartland Payment Systems; Infineon Technologies; INSIDE Secure; JPMorgan Chase; LTK Engineering Services; MasterCard Worldwide; NACHA; NagraID Security; NXP Semiconductors; Oberthur Technologies; Quadagno & Associates; Thales e-Security; WatchData Technologies USA; VeriFone; Visa Inc.; ViVOtech; and Mike Kutsch; Dale Laszig; and Chandra Srivastava.
Source: MarketWire