Apple’s move into payments with its Apple Pay service represents a tipping point for contactless payments, according to Verifone Europe president June Yee Felix, speaking at the Cartes 2014 event in Paris.
Apple’s move into payments could be a tipping point
The benefits of the tech giant adopting NFC are considerable, she said. “Apple Pay is something wonderful for our industry,” she told several hundred delegates attending the opening summit of the event. “They have engaged the consumer. The technology has been there for some time. Others, such as Google, have gone down the same road, but what’s different is that Apple has captured the imagination of the consumer.”
She added that with over 200,000 contactless-enabled merchants in the US, the momentum for consumer adoption is unstoppable. “It will get consumer excitement going and that is very, very important.
Oyvind Rastad, chairman of industry trade body Eurosmart, also commented on the impact of Apple’s arrival in the market. “It’s great news for the industry. Next year will be the year of NFC. I know this is the third time I’ve said this, but NFC is becoming a commercial reality.” He added that almost two billion EMV cards were issued this year, 500 million of them in China alone.
However, not everyone at Cartes is convinced that NFC adoption is at the tipping point. The CEO of POS specialist Spire, Kazem Aminaee, told Cartes delegates that mPOS is likely outpace NFC, with contactless card payments only reaching 1% of global payment transactions despite the promise the technology shows.
“NFC did not take off because of the technology itself and the complexity around the ecosystem. The time and cost of device manufacturers getting devices certified is high. Everyone has invested so much in NFC that it will take off one day but it will take five to ten years. Ultimately the market will gravitate to payment solutions without a separate terminal, combining instead an open platform mobile device running Android or IOS with a secure platform that can process payments on the same machine.”
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