The NFC (Near Field Communication) Symposium took place 22–24 January, 2014 in Stockholm, Sweden. Despite the fact that this year a big attention was payed to retail industry, other participants of payment ecosystem representing banks, TSMs, mobile operators, NFC service providers, and others, have actively participated in the event.
Different NFC based solutions and services, their prototypes and use cases were discussed during the event. I would like to briefly mention some of them.
One of the most discussed theme became a Norwegian mobile wallet Valyou, a service developed by a joint company TSM Nordic established by Telenor and DNB bank. The national launch of the solution is scheduled on March.
Another interesting NFC service was deployed by SAS for golden customers. It is SAS Smart Pass – an NFC sticker attachable on the phone. The main aim is to ensure easy and seamless journey for passengers at the airport checkpoints: starting Self Service Kiosk dialog, passing the Security and Fast Tracks, accessing Lounge, and boarding to the aircraft.
Company Pricer presented electronic tags for retail. Being a part of the whole informational system of a retail store, the solution allows easy to update prices, quickly to access stock and delivery information, to manage store and online prices in a centralized way in real time, to connect to social media, to allow customer reviews and ratings, and so on.
My presentation consisted of several parts: overview of mobile payment solutions in the retail industry and main barriers to NFC service penetration.
