Mobile industry pushes for wireless payment using cell phones

The start of the Mobile Asia Congress in Macau this week saw the GSM Association (GSMA) once again calling for the rapid adoption of Near Field Communications (NFC) by building the technology into mobile phones. The idea is to get NFC onto every mobile phone out there, where it can form the building block to facilitate the creation of a contactless mobile payment industry.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out the reason behind GSMA getting handset manufacturers to build NFC into their products. Traditionally, convenience and ease of use are the key factors in determining the popularity of a technology as well as the take-up rate by users at the end of the day. Needless to say, all the talk about contactless mobile payment is a moot point unless users can first get access to an NFC "wallet." What better way to do that than to build the technology into the ubiquitous mobile phone?

The road to contactless payment is still long and fraught with problems. For example, hackers successfully cloned London's Tube Oyster card not too long ago. Will NFC ever be cracked? It's hard to say at this point, though you can be sure that the repercussions will be severe. - Paul