Video: How to make NFC payments compelling

Everyone is talking about near-field communications and especially contactless payments. It’s one of the biggest payment trends right now but It’s also received it’s fair share of criticism from skeptics. We look at some of the challenges the industry faces and talk to Donal McGuinness about the challenges facing the payments industry in getting NFC adopted by merchants and by consumers and how they’re addressing the problem.

NFC vendors have been taking an innovative approach to NFC adoption. In the absence of national NFC standards or a network, some have chosen to roll out mini-NFC ecosystems in to get round the problem. Focusing on communities, this encourages acceptance town-by-town, in large population centres. Encouraging community participation means that customers are incentivised to keep using the contactless system in all the stops along their usual shopping route. Another interesting benefit is that this NFC model provides traditional bricks and mortar retailers with a tool to compete with the online retailer marketplace and help to boost the local economy.