Today's consumers increasingly value convenience -- services or features that they regard as "useful to me." Mobile payment pilot projects and implementations carried out here and outside of the United States have shown that consumers value the convenience of using their mobile phones for payment at a physical POS. One forecast predicts that mobile phone-based contactless payments will account for over $36 billion of worldwide consumer spending by 2011, while another indicates that by 2012, some 292 million handsets -- just over 20 percent of the global mobile handset market -- will ship with built-in NFC capabilities.
Several factors are driving mobile payment deployment according to Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "Consumers are adopting wireless data services, including contactless payments, very rapidly," he said. "Within North America, the financial industry has rolled out more than 21 million contactless payment cards and devices and over 50,000 merchants are putting in place the point-of-sale infrastructure that accepts contactless payments. Next, mobile hardware with NFC technology, can leverage these experienced contactless payment customers and the POS terminal infrastructure used by merchants to accept contactless payments cards. Finally, mobile operators, merchants, banks, and other service providers recognize that mobile payment initiatives offer business benefits and market differentiation."
"The addition of proximity NFC technology to mobile phones in combination of contactless financial payments offers opportunities for convergence and compelling business value to all stakeholders," Vanderhoof concluded.
The white paper is available at no charge from the Smart Card Alliance Web site at www.smartcardalliance.org.
