Telecom Council: Mobile Forum: NFC Payments June 21, 2012

Join 100 wireless industry professionals who are pushing the NFC market forward for this 1/2 day discussion with plenty of time for networking. This meeting brings together carriers, vendors, financial service companies, and dozens of emerging companies who are all trying to make 2012 the year for NFC.

2011 was a notable year for mobile payment systems. For the first time there is a clear industry momentum behind NFC-enabled smartphones with the launch of the first NFC enabled Android smartphone (the Nexus S), the ISIS partnership (with three major US mobile operators and all four major US card networks) and major players like Google and PayPal betting on NFC. Android now offers comprehensive NFC APIs and US operators now are in a position to require OEMs include NFC in the device using a standardized implementation. Traditional payment networks seem to have committed to ISIS because of clarity of the Secure Element issue while players like PayPal and Google seem to have chosen the alternative approach and by-passed it completely. Taken together the technology issues around NFC inclusion are much clearer (some might even say they are essentially resolved).

This year, the focus must shift to getting users and retailers to adopt the technology and this is where we see room for innovation. The key as always are new user experiences and business models that act as drivers for adoption. In this meeting, discussion will center around:
- Integrating user identity, loyalty, couponing and payment mechanisms to create a seamless experience (can we really do everything with one wave?)
- Developing new business models that incentivize retailers to invest in new infrastructure (why should I buy a new reader?) and users to adopt (why should I store my credit card info on my smartphone)?
- Offering value added services around the shopping experience (social, local, advertising)

Official Website: http://telecomcouncil.cvent.com/NFC2012