Mobile NFC to make $50 billion

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The growth of near field communications (NFC) will see mobile contactless payments bring in $50 billion (£30.4 billion) over the next three years.

This is the conclusion of a study released today by Juniper Research, which claimed global touch-and-pay technologies on mobile handsets will bring in the massive revenues by 2014.

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

These will encourage more of the sector onboard and make 2011 and 2012 “banner years” for NFC roll-out, according to Juniper.

“Based on our analysis and interviews with key industry players, our view is that the next 18 months will see launches in up to 20 countries,” said senior analyst at the firm, David Snow.

“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."

Snow even predicted the US and Western Europe would account for 50 per cent of all NFC payments by 2014.

However, the predictions are merely that and the outcomes are not set in stone. Juniper believes there is still much more work to be done to make NFC handsets “mainstream” as, despite the surge in announcements, the technology is still only built-in to a limited number of phones.

But, with the likes of coupon offers and smart posters to drive customer desire for the technology, the money could come rolling in.

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