NFC Mobile Payment Trend

After ApplePay’s deployment in October 2015, NFC mobile payment adoption is taking off in the USA. I am curious about how people perceive this technology (NFC) and its application (ApplePay & mobile payment). Therefore I did a Google Trends comparison between Mobile Payment, NFC and ApplePay today. To my surprise, the trend indicates there has been an increase in people searching NFC comparing to searching “mobile payment” and “ApplePay” (see attachment below).

Asia seems to be the continent that is more into the technology. The interested regions are as follows:

Google Wallet, the first NFC mobile payment app, was released in 2012. There is no surprised that such an innovation came from a company that embraces creativity. Shortly after, to Google’s surprise, the telecoms, who were developing their own NFC-based mobile payment app, blocked Google Wallet. This challenge forced Google to look into an alternative way to implement NFC mobile payment. Thus, the HCE (Host Card Emulation) approach was created in order to bypass telecom’s control on Secure Element.

Softcard (formally, ISIS), a joint venture between AT&T, Verizon and TMobile started a trial in late 2013 and was launched in 2014. To promote and educate people on the NFC mobile payment technology, one million complimentary Jamba Juices were given away to Softcard users. Despite these efforts, the adoption rate of Softcard was not good enough to sustain the business; especially facing competition with ApplePay and its trademark simple user experience.

Last month, Softcard was bought by Google. I wonder what the agreement is between Google and telecoms? Will this be another walled garden business model? Is the NFC mobile payment market a war between Apple and Google now?

It’s interesting to watch the evolution of these NFC applications; especially in the mobile payment market. Various challenges continue to stimulate more innovations. After all, a vision has to be either supported by a market demand or inspiring enough to create a new market entirely.

About the Author:

Hsuan-hua Chang has over 20 years of experience in wireless technology, holding many corporate positions ranging from software engineer, technical architect to product marketing manager. She is the author of “Everyday NFC Second Edition: Near Field Communication Explained”