With the iPhone 5 lacking NFC, as well as having an elongated body that won’t fit the Commonwealth Bank’s iCarte NFC case, it seems that options for contactless mobile payments on the new iOS device are severely limited, at least in the short term.
But with more and more NFC-enabled Android smartphones hitting the market, it’s only a matter of time before mobile payments become mainstream. Currently there are over 100,000 contactless point-of-sale devices around the country, with both Coles and Woolworths publicly announcing plans to bring contactless payments to their supermarket chains.
In other words, the infrastructure is there for the mobile wallet to take off, banks and smartphone manufacturers just need to connect the dots.
Touch me, baby
There’s no doubt that the idea of using your smartphone to buy stuff is the most appealing aspect of NFC devices. But the beauty of NFC is that it has the potential to be so much more.
Already we’ve seen Sony Ericsson include a pair of NFC tags in the box with NFC-enabled Xperia smartphones. These tags can be easily programmed to adjust smartphone settings quickly and easily by tapping the phone up against the tag. For example, you can automatically launch the phone’s satnav application, turn off WiFi and switch on Bluetooth by touching a tag located in your car, saving you from manually adjusting these settings yourself.
The same tag-based opportunities will soon make their way into marketing, replacing the cumbersome QR code as a way to engage consumers with brands, special offers and discounts. Australian startup TapIt, for example, is developing world-class marketing strategies using NFC, which can be programmed to initiate anything from a link, to Liking a business on Facebook, to offering tourist information at key locations around The Rocks in Sydney.
Both Nokia and Parrot have used NFC to bypass the pairing issues with Bluetooth, allowing wireless headphones to connect to smartphones by simply touching them together. At the January 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, manufacturers such as Sony showed NFC enabled televisions, Blu-ray home theatre systems, speaker docks and tablets which allowed easy pairing for smartphone control and streaming media solutions.
Of course, these are just some of the practical uses of the technology presently being explored. There is potential for the technology to reach even further into daily lives, turning a smartphone into a house key or car key.
A recent concept from Hyundai, for example, showed how a smartphone would allow you to lock and unlock the car by waving your phone over a small tag on the car window. Inside the car, the smartphone would wirelessly charg on a pad in the centre console, while content syncs and streamed to the incar infotainment system and touchscreen. The company is aiming to introduce this level of smartphone integration by 2015.
Another possibility is to transform your smartphone into a ticket. Whether it’s to get in to see the latest blockbuster movie, board a plane or just hop on a bus, NFC will enable consumers to tap their smartphone on an NFC reader to enter, streamlining the process of boarding or entering a venue.
Combined with the idea of a digital wallet, NFC has the ability to truly make your smartphone the only device you ever need, replacing cash, cards, keys and tickets. It’s no wonder then that it’s expected that 843 million NFC smartphones will be sold in 2015.
But is it secure?
NFC’s biggest drawback is its questionable level of security. Hackers have shown that it is possible to intercept data transmitted between two NFC devices easily, allowing criminals to gain access to your credit card details without any effort.
But to do that, the hackers needed to be within a few metres of the NFC devices. This in itself is a pretty good security function, as it will always be easy to tell if someone is trying to intercept your details.
In any case, security for the standard is only going to get better over time as the technology becomes more and more mainstream.
