Thursday, April 07, 2011

More observers are doubtful about NFC take-up: a sample of quotes

We all know that NFC payments will play a major role in how we conduct financial transactions in future. Lots of energy and effort are being invested in making this happen and one should take cognisance of this. At the same time though, it is important to be sober about the potential and the impact that it would have. Lately, a number of analysts and industry players have been more doubtful about the immediate success of NFC. Below is a collection:
  • Nick Holland (Yankee Group): "The announcements by Sprint and Isis seem very half-baked at this point." (Read here)
  • Bob Egan (The Sepharim Group): "... it's just another science experiment."(Read here)
  • Marty Beard (Sybase): “Everyone is jostling for position but will people actually use this thing?” (Read here)
  • Sarah Clark (NFC Business Models) "Does not necessarily mean, however, that these leading operators have now found an answer to the need for a business model for the launch of commercial NFC services,” (Read here).
  • Richard Crone (Crone Consulting): "...with NFC, all you’ll get are mobile check-in and mobile marketing," (Read here)
  • Thomas Husson (Forrester) "Mass adoption of NFC mobile payment systems is still "years away"" (Read here)
In the meantime many other analysts will ensure that the hype level remains high.

2 comments:

Kaiser Shahzad said...

Very much true. My question would be the mobile barcode and tags are still not at their peak how we can expect NFC with that investment might fly? I think NFC is being oversell by the vendors. Lets see how things got in shapes.

Frans Stander said...

Interesting to note the recent articles on Isis joint ventures with other parties, when it was broadcasted that the proposed Isis venture on a mobile payment platform was to be shelved,... only to be aggressively denied by Isis a week later.

With so many players and opportunities in the mobile payments arena, one could expect some fierce competition, coinciding with related rumours,overselling and scrambling by competitors to obtain a fare share in the market...