Mobey Forum offers market strategies for NFC
12 October, 2011
category: NFC
Mobey Forum, a bank-led mobile commerce industry association, has released a new report providing industry stakeholders with a strategy for making NFC contactless mobile payments at the point of sale a mass market reality.
The report, Business Models for NFC Payments, addresses how all stakeholders – i.e., financial institutions, MNOs, handset manufacturers and software providers – can assess different implementation options, define the business case and roles that will meet their requirements, and establish a clear market strategy with essential partnerships, according to Mobey.
The paper also analyzes the current NFC ecosystem and showcases different types of technology and deployment strategies, explaining how these can be used to identify which implementation model that best aligns with a stakeholder’s commercial needs.
Jordi Guaus, chair of the Mobey Forum Business Workgroup and head of Mobile Payments at “la Caixa”, comments: “The study acknowledges that customer demand for NFC services will grow substantially in the near term, presenting businesses with profitable opportunities. The marketplace, however, still has a lot to do to ensure NFC payment reaches its potential. There are many implementation models to choose from requiring payment service providers and other stakeholders to make significant business decisions today about an emerging ecosystem that is evolving rapidly.”
Guaus states that from a business standpoint, the convergence of many different markets to deliver NFC payments, and the complexity of these new commercial relationships, has created a barrier to widespread deployment.
“We established that it is possible to define the business case for any implementation model by examining factors such as revenues and expenditures, costs relating to issuing processes and lifecycle management, and recognizing other key benefits such as customer retention,” added Guaus. “This will speed-up and inspire confidence in the decision-making process.”
The report also offers a gap analysis on what the industry still needs to accomplish. According to Mobey, this includes technical interoperability and the establishment of a trusted model by developing defined certification processes that meet the needs of all stakeholders.
Guaus concludes: “We still do not know which implementation model will be preferred by the end-user and this creates many unknown factors. What we do know is that NFC payments will become a reality and all actors within this space need to be prepared, even if they do not plan to roll out implementations straightaway. We believe our white paper offers a great starting place.”
Contributors to the white paper include: American Express, CellPoint Mobile, DnB NOR, European Payments Council, ING, “la Caixa”, NCR, Nokia, Nordea, Royal Bank of Scotland and Visa Inc.