Apple is rumored to have well over 200 million+ users on iTunes with registered credit cards. That would make future iPhones enabled with Near Field Communications (NFC) chips an absolute dominator in mobile payments. So what’s the hold up?
It’s rumored that Apple believes NFC standards are not wide spread enough and might be developing their own NFC standards. Although NFC has been slow to materialize in the US, the technology is pretty wide spread in Asia and Europe. 750,000 point-of-sale terminals already exist in the US, so all we are waiting for are NFC enabled devices. A number of mobile manufactures in the US such as Nokia, Samsung, Google, etc. have already released devices and it’s speculated that 50 million NFC-enabled devices worldwide will exist by the end of the year.
Apple has such an advantage with iTunes registered credit cards unlike any other retailer or manufacturing, they could literally define how we interact with NFC and make the use of mobile payments and more a reality faster than anyone.
For Marketers and Agencies, Apples entrance into NFC would quickly change how we need to market and communicate to consumer. We’ll need to re-prioritize in-store experiences, digital experiences, and overall strategies as NFC opens up a world of creative and technological ideas we’ve not fully explored outside of mobile payments. NFC-enabled devices should excite every agency, especially one like Engauge. I can’t wait for our talented people to really push new bounties and think beyond what Apple or Google might do with NFC.
Raj Choudhury - Atlanta 
Leave a Reply