This event took place on 12th September at 6pm
NFC is one of the current buzz terms in mobile and, whilst still in the early stages of adoption, is set to grow massively over the next couple of years. The event was introduced by MoMoMcr’s Garry Partington and chaired by Tim Jefferson of The Human Chain. Guest speakers were Danny Gray from Google, Dominic Howe from Bolser and Jason Rousseau-Hall of Everything Everywhere.
Tim Jefferson started by introducing The Human Chain, which has been working on NFC for six years. He made the point that there are lots of myths surrounding NFC but ultimately it’s about customer experience, not technology. NFC has been massively hyped as a technology by the media and different parts of the world are at different stages with it. Handsets are coming and will increase in 2012 and NFC is also available in different formats, such as cards, stickers, sleeves, fobs etc. The buzz about it now is arising as a result of players like Google, PayPal and Amazon coming into the market and starting to ‘sweat’ NFC technology.
Compelling customer experience is critical: NFC is about far more than just payment – it’s about offers, vouchers, loyalty, coupons, and access into PCs and laptops. It’s also about mobile advertising and proximity advertising, combined with other enablers on the device. End users need to see and understand its value and want to pay for these sorts of solutions.
Nobody has fully worked NFC out yet. There isn’t really just one answer and early players may not be long-term winners – it’s going to take time to fully come to market. Customers do, however, find it really compelling when they use it so education is essential.
There are lots of new players with new ideas who are changing the NFC landscape. This is just the start and mass adoption will take some time.
Google’s Danny Gray told us that there are currently over 1bn mobile internet users worldwide and by 2015 there will be 3.5bn, i.e. half the world’s population. 31m people in the UK currently use the mobile internet, probably facilitated by the generally cost-effective mobile payments plans in the UK, compared to other parts of Europe and the US. There are c. £0.5bn mobile payments currently being made in the UK and this is set to grow to £3.5bn during the next three years, with NFC helping to fuel the trend.
Our mobile phones are becoming our best shopping companion – we use them to compare prices and scan bar codes in-store, with lots of apps to help facilitate the process. Offers on mobile phones can drive people in-store and then using NFC to pay completes the loop, making the process seamless and integrated.
NFC has benefits for all kinds of organisations – financial institutions, retailers and mobile operators. What will drive NFC adoption is ease of payment, making sure the system works across different merchants, speed and efficiency of mobile networks and user awareness. NFC is big in Japan and Korea, but is still being tried out in the USA and Western Europe, with cost and security being two key issues that are causing concern.
Google is focusing on shopping, offers and loyalty, payments and digital content. Online coupons are huge and have exploded during the past couple of years – they will be a 6bn dollar market by 2014. In the UK, specifically, there has been a massive growth in the search for coupons. QR codes are also growing and SMS is continuing to grow, as is location check-in. NFC provides the final part of closing the deal through its payment feature and key market players are moving into the space but, if you get involved in the next six months, you’ll still be ahead of the game.
Dominic Howe from Bolser talked about NFC Hub, which is a collaboration between Bolser and Nokia. He sees NFC as being the ultimate call to action.
When people discuss NFC everybody talks about it being used for payments – but for it to explode, we need to build habit for this technology and make people more comfortable with it. NFC Hub is about much more than payment – it’s about opening up the technology to everyone and making it fun, useful and interesting for users. He encourages anyone to set up an NFC campaign and get the experience out there so that people can really start seeing it. He gave lots of different examples of how NFC can be used in different and interesting ways – in retail, online check-in and taxi posters to name but a few – and talked about Nokia’s NFC work with the Museum of London to help with customer engagement and a better experience for visitors.
Jason Rousseau-Hall from Everything Everywhere, a joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, said that NFC is still at the ‘toddler’ stage and hasn’t yet come of age. It’s not just about payments – it’s about consumers and their lifestyle. It’s the merging of the online and offline world, with NFC converging everything we do in life, from credit cards to cash to tagging etc, into a mobile service.
If we build the service in the right way, NFC adoption will follow. A major project has been taking place in Nice since May last year, involving transportation, ticketing, loyalty, tags and payment. This is the first NFC project of its kind, whereby operators, schemes, financial institutions, retailers and loyalty organisations have been working together to develop a standard for NFC, and it is being seen almost as the bedrock of NFC services around Europe.
The whole environment of NFC revolves around working together and partnerships; there needs to be open and collaborative approach. Orange Quick Tap is available in over 60,000 stores now, ie retailers have access to contactless terminals and consumers just ‘tap’ to make a payment. Partnership was the key to making this work.
Many organisations are introducing wallets – but a wallet is essentially just a container with added functionality. Our mobile phone will become our wallet, and we will have our debit and credit cards on there. Over the next 12 to 18 months, services will evolve; there will be new handsets and we will generally see everyone in the industry working together to ensure the evolution of these devices.
Thanks to the chair, all our panellists and to all those who attended. Please feel free to download the slides from this event:
Tim Jefferson The Human Chain slides
Jason Rousseau-Hall Orange slides
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