Consumers gear up for NFC

One in four Americans are prepared to pay for groceries using their mobile phone instead of a debit or credit card, despite a continuing fear over the security of mobile phone payments, reports Near Field Communications World.

This was discovered in research firm Compete's 2011 Smartphone Intelligence survey.

IT Pro says according to Juniper Research, the growth of near field communications (NFC) will see mobile contactless payments bring in $50 billion over the next three years.

A number of big hitters in the telecoms industry have recently introduced mobile wallet offerings, such as the Orange/BarclayCard partnership in the UK and the Google/MasterCard deal in the US.

Gadgets and Gizmos reveals that senior analyst David Snow, says: “Based on our analysis and interviews with key industry players, our view is that the next 18 months will see [NFC roll-outs] in up to 20 countries.

“As a result, Juniper is forecasting that North America and Western Europe together will exceed the Far East region in under three years based on transaction value.”

Juniper warns that merchants and operators will need to adopt the new technology to ensure that NFC goes mainstream. The same goes for mobile phone manufactures because at the moment only a handful of NFC handsets exist.