Despite well-documented challenges, industry players appear to be ramping up investments in NFC payments solutions. What are the emerging lessons from the field?

Celent has long been sceptical about the viability of NFC payments in developed markets. Multiple well-known issues, such as complexity of partnerships and required infrastructure upgrades, have been stifling the development of NFC payments. And yet the NFC train seems to be gathering steam. The infrastructure problems are gradually being solved. The industry players appear to be ramping up investments in NFC.

Over the last few years, Celent has been observing and studying NFC implementations around the world, such as Google Wallet, Isis, Move and Pay by Intesa Sanpaolo, Quick Tap by Orange and Barclaycard, and other solutions as well as the experiences of banks, mobile network operators, and their partnerships. The report Launching NFC Payments: Emerging Lessons from Recent Implementations describes insights derived from these studies.

“There is still a large degree of uncertainty around how mobile payments will evolve, so not all banks will want and be able to afford to invest in NFC technology at this stage,” says Zilvinas Bareisis, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Banking Group and author of the report. “For those who can and do want to invest, we believe that the lessons and recommendations described in this report will serve as a valuable framework for accelerating NFC deployment.”

This report describes seven emerging lessons from recent NFC implementations. Celent deliberately focused attention on the issues we consider to be the most challenging, such as agreeing on the business model and building out the network of merchants and consumers.

This 36-page report contains 11 figures and two tables.