While contactless technology in ticketing and payments grew 15 percent last year, ABI Research says NFC didn’t fare so well due to the difficulties in bringing NFC-compliant phones to market. The NFC market will remain limited for the first half of 2008 but its “long-term forecasts (of healthy growth) remain unchanged,” says ABI.

From previous research we know that US consumers are keen to use their mobile handsets for making in-store payments, but the majority only wants to have one credit or debit account for making those purchases, according to a new ABI Research survey of US consumer attitudes. Much of the work on developing a standard application platform across NFC handsets has been geared at providing a platform capable of supporting and managing multiple payment accounts from any number of credit and debit card issuers. However, ABI Research’s “Mobile and Contactless Payments” survey, carried out at the end of 2007, reveals that initially at least, consumers prefer a single account that is easy to manage on the handset.

Silicon Valley-based ViVOtech’s ViVOnfc infrastructure software for Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phone payments is starting to be used by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in its first NFC mobile phone payment launch in conjunction with MasterCard at the Masters Golf Tournament in Australia. According to ViVOtech, this deployment marks Australia’s first NFC mobile phone payment pilot and supports both credit and prepaid mobile phone payments. NFC phones will be given away at the golf tournament and can be used throughout the country for payment at any contactless-enabled store.

Sony unveiled a new proprietary Near Field Communication technology called TransferJet at the Consumer Electronics Show this past weekend. TransferJet can allow high-speed wireless data transfer and is Sony’s response to UWB (ultra-wide band) technology. For instance it can connect a camcorder to a television simply by placing the camcorder on top of this wireless unit. Sony plans to commercialize TransferJet-based products in 2009. Find out more information about the new technology in EE Times’ article about TransferJet.  

INSIDE Contactless has closed its most recent strategic funding round with new participants Motorola Ventures and HID Global. They join existing investors which include: Sofinnova Partners, Vertex Management, Vertex Ventures, Siparex, GIMV, EuroUS Venture, Granite Global Ventures, Visa Ventures, and recently announced Nokia Ventures. “This investment will allow INSIDE to expand and accelerate the development of our product lines, and create the conditions for a worldwide success in rollout of NFC,” said Remy de Tonnac, CEO of INSIDE Contactless.

More than 419 million NFC chipsets will ship in 2012, according to a new study from ABI Research. However, similar to revenue in most semiconductor markets, NFC revenue is offset by declining unit ASPs. By 2012, ABI Research forecasts that the NFC chipset ASP will decline to $0.97, for a total market revenue of $406 million. In North America, ABI Research sees demand for handset application directives from operators, as well as from third parties. Europe’s payment infrastructure tied to the EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) deployments make it extremely well-suited for NFC, according to ABI. This region is a highly transit-centric environment full of content and mobile payment opportunities across its GSM family networks.

Experience NFC technology personally at the NFC Zone at CES 2008, January 7-10 in Las Vegas. See live demonstrations of NFC technology enabling a variety of mobile payments, including using a phone as a payment or travel card. Watch mobile proximity purchases made easily using an NFC-enabled device. Experience the ease of transmitting digital pictures over a secure Bluetooth connection. Learn how mobile phone-based coupons can be redeemed at point of sale. See a USB-NFC reader enabling card-to-PC communications, and NFC-enabled products for the car, home and office. Discover how NFC phones can collect and display information from smart posters, and Bluetooth devices can connect simply by waving a mobile phone over an NFC reader/writer.

Mobile contactless solutions based on near field communication (NFC) technology are still in their infancy, but this constitutes a promising area of development for numerous new services based on proximity interactions between the end user and their physical environment, according to a new Research and Markets report. Operator demand for NFC phones is the main driver for the development of NFC-enabled phones on a wider scale. This is still pretty much the trial stage for most operators around the world, but according to the report, this is about to change as an increasing number of commercial launches are due to take place in 2008. Additionally, NFC’s standards need to be finalized before NFC-enabled phones will become a widely sold product, which is predicted to happen during the second half of 2008.

Bluetooth SIG’s announcement of adopting the new spec for Bluetooth, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, made it a top Gear Live’s most popular episodes for 2007. In this episode, Mike Foley gives a first look at what is improved in the new spec, and shows off near field communication technology that is integrated into the new Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. The new standard also expects to yield a better battery life five times greater than the current battery life.   

Trevor Pavey,
Contactless Payments Manager,
Texas Instruments

In the world of payments, contactless technology continues to make waves. With more than 20 million cards issued in the last year, more contactless payment devices in more consumers’ hands, means a greater potential for more revenue.

More consumers, more devices, more revenue … these trends will continue in 2008, but we expect the contactless payments market to be dominated by three other “Ms” as well – merchants, mobile payments and multi-applications. In these areas, we’ll see new merchant categories and merchant education of consumers, cards that carry multi-applications like payment and transit, and more NFC trials and progress on the path to developing the business case for NFC-enabled mobile payments.