Near Field Communction (NFC) Pros and Cons

By this time we all know that it is coming but what is it going to change for us an an individual is an interesting thing to think of.

Using your phone as your payment method. How many people would like to do this? You don't flaunt your credit card in your hand when travelling in a train! You don't play with your credit card when sitting in a restaurant. All you do is to try to keep it safe from pickers and runners.  

Having said this I am not favouring credit cards over phone. At least with NFC you can you can be sure you need to have the device to pay unlike credit card where just the details are enough for fraudsters. NFC with pins can be real problem solvers but the accepting device needs to be sophisticated enough to identify multiple taps. Contact less cards when launched had this huge problems of users going back to merchants after every statement.  

NFC has a huge potential where you can do lots of things which you cannot do with your cards as of now.  There will be a need to create applications to add new programs to your chip and identify based on the merchant device which program is applicable for the transaction. This I am sure will not be there in the first phase launch and will take some time to come. Would be really happy to get this tough.

NFC transformation to web usage will be interesting to watch out for. entering credit card information on a mobile browser is really dirty. If we can pay using phone even when we non phone browsers will be real move away from credit cards. And the way to implement this is not going to be difficult or a long way away. All that is needed it to send a message to your phone confirmation the transaction. This way even if a fraudster hacks your account, payments cannot be made with you being informed! 

All you need to do is to tie your phone to your under ware because it is easier to loose it than a credit card.

-v