photo credit: mac morrison
Mashable has taken a look at the big companies battling to replace your wallet with mobile phone NFC technology.
Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have their eyes on the NFC mobile payment market, setting the stage for a potentially brutal battle over the future of payments. NFC, or near-field communication, allows for wireless transfer of data over short distances between two devices. This makes it an ideal technology for financial transactions between a phone and a device at a brick-and-mortar store.
There seems to be daily announcements on movements in the NFC industry, but we’re still yet to see anything that will get widespread use.
Having said that, if these big players can’t develop the technology (or buy up a smaller company to push its technology) that’s simple to use and widely available, then it might never take off.
That sounds pretty cool, but what if that NFC mobile get stolen? I am not sure if we need more technology at this point. Sounds like we already have a bunch of problems to solve as it is in the world.
A lot of companies are betting that 2011 is the year NFC takes off in the U.S., and are working on their own NFC payment solutions.