NFC payments on mobiles to skyrocket

SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION of us will be using Near Field Communications (NFC) in our mobile phones to pay for all sorts of stuff within the next five years, according to the analyst bods at Juniper Research.

With the recent success of O2's pay-by-mobile trials, it seems the powers that be have decided that it's the way forward, no matter how easily RFID can be hacked - perhaps all the hushing up has worked.

Juniper's 'Mobile Payment Markets: Contactless NFC 2008-2013' report reckons that NFC mobile payment services, chips, phones and supporting services as the market reaches its tipping point over the 2011 to 2013 period.

"NFC is an exciting and versatile technology that has great potential to make many everyday tasks such as buying small value items as well as tickets much easier," explained the report's author, Howard Wilcox.

He added that we'll able to use these for all sorts things other than just payments, like smart posters and advertisements, which will tell you the best way to spend even more money.

The research predicts that global mobile subscribers with NFC phones will reach 700 million by 2013, with the Far Easy, Western Europe and the US leading the charge each claiming a 25 per cent share of the market by that time.

To date the Japanese are leading the way in this arena with around 50 million Felica-enabled phones on the networks of NTT Docomo, KDDI and Softbank having been shipped.

The analysts do cover themselves a bit by adding that their calculations are dependant on the availability of NFC phones and the speed of installation of NFC readers by merchants. µ