Last night’s MoMo London was themed "NFC - Connecting the Real and Virtual Worlds for Marketing and Media".

Victoria Richardson (Proxama) and Claire Maslen (O2) presented followed by a panel session additionally including James Anderson (Mastercard Worldwide), John Hill (IBridge) and Steve Griffiths (iconmobile).

Here are a few random observations…

• We are currently stuck in the trial phase of NFC.
• There are (the usual mobile) issues over who (phone OEM, network operator, payment provider) owns/controls the consumer.
• An O2 trial showed consumers are happy to use NFC for payment and travel. They are also happy for pin-less payment for small transactions, provided there’s some limit such as a ’stored value’ scheme.
• O2 (and presumably other network operators) would only be happy offering NFC across multiple devices (allowing consumer choice).
• In the case of Barclaycard PayPass there seems to be a greater problem enabling merchants than enabling consumers.
• NFC can be used to provide some location based services.
• It’s not about technology because it’s already proven. The real problems are with inter company cooperation and agreements.
• One of the main NFC USPs for consumers and merchants is speed of transaction.
• For large transactions that require dial up authorisation, the speed of the transaction is lost.
• The 2012 Olympics may drive NFC innovation.
• For multiple (network, payment, transport) providers, the processes and back office systems become very complex. Example usecases include losing and replacing phones or switching payment/travel providers.
• Third party Trusted Service Providers (TSPs) are emerging that may manage the complexity.
• The amalgamation of operator, payment and transport data provides a valuable data resource suitable for loyalty type applications.

Prior to the event, I had thought of NFC as a niche area despite myself having worked on NFC twice previously. The first was working on Windows Mobile based handheld terminals for Cubic (the Oyster system) and more recently I did some NFC Java ME Mifare based feasibility work for the University of Surrey. Prior to the MoMo event, I had thought the lack of NFC enabled phones would limit what’s possible.

However, Claire Maslen from O2 twice mentioned NFC SIMs that I hadn’t heard of previously. Doing some reading around, SIMs are already available and these provide more opportunities for a greater diversity of NFC enabled phones. The only catch at the moment is that the SIM still needs an NFC antenna and phone manufacturers have to be persuaded to somehow include the antenna as part of the phone (or the battery). Maybe there’s a greater future in mobile NFC that I first thought?

UPDATE: Andrew Grill also has a summary of the evening.

Related Articles:

• August MoMo London
• June Momo London

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 9:50 am and is filed under Mobile, MoMoLondon, MoMo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.