Mobile payment is expected to mount up by four folds to $1.3 trillion in 2016 and NFC will play a significant role in overall mobile transactions in upcoming years. However, the penetration of NFC mobile payment is still meager, but it’s expected to get traction soon in forthcoming years. Last year, 35 million NFC-enabled smartphones were shipped and the figure will reach to 1.2 billion units by 2015.
A market intelligence company–ABI research–has predicted that NFC-based mobile payments will hit $4 billion figure in 2012 and will surge to $100 billion and $191 billion in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The convergence between mobile payments types —proximity, P2P and online payment types integrated on NFC handsets— will boost the mobile payment market in coming years. However, the market is still not comfort for mass commercial rollout of NFC services.  This time, smart card, IC vendors, MNOs, partnering service providers, device OEMs  and payments networks are planning to set a suitable business model to attract significant number of users around the world.
Transportation and ticketing are expected to get more benefited From the convergence of payments types —contactless ticketing application would account for 26% of all NFC handsets transactions forecast in 2017.
Why Apple Chose Passbook Over NFC ?
It’s pretty-known that Apple has not encompassed NFC mobile payment in iPhone 5, while other high-end smartphone vendors have included the mobile payment type in their respective devices. Globally, only 2% of merchants are equipped with NFC reader terminals and the figure isn’t enough to draw an attention of Apple. It’s also predicted that the NFC market convergence will take at least two year to prove itself in the reality. However, Apple has integrated ‘Passbook mobile payment’ software in iOS 6.
Passbook is based on transmitting payment data through barcodes on the iPhone 5’s display. Apple has significant number of smartphone user base and of course, implementation of Passbook mobile payment could be lucrative for the company; It’s the best way to collect all passes–airline boarding pass, a Starbuck card, a football ticket and other forms of money-backed passes–in one place.
Apple Could Introduce NFC-Enabled Devices Soon
In June 2011, ‘Juniper Research‘ predicts that global NFC mobile payment transaction will touch almost US$50 billion globally by 2014—20 countries would launch the service in next 18 months from June 2012. The firm also revealed that almost 300 million smartphone around the world will be NFC-enabled by 2014.
Of course, the world is going to embrace NFC in coming years and definitely, Apple will not lose the opportunity to generate a hoard of cash from NFC-enabled device. Indeed, $191 billion transactions through NFC smartphones by 2017 is not a mot and if Apple delays in launching NFC-enabled device, then it will have to pay for.
