6 ms·

I have watched a lot of these initiatives come and go but this one is the first that I think has a strong chance of success. The core elements are already inte

by 51Cards 15y ago

I have watched a lot of these initiatives come and go but this one is the first that I think has a strong chance of success. The core elements are already integrated for full functionality and offers. With a bank and credit company on board, an existing hardware system deployed, and the ability to quickly tie it into the millions of existing Google accounts I think this just might be the tipping point. High percentage adoption by the consumer will take awhile. Lots of phone upgrades, consumer trust, and general concept awareness will take time. Edit: I think this will be overlooked some as well. The Subway partnership is huge. They have the most fast food stores in the world (I believe they exceeded McDonalds last year). Talk about copious instant eyeball time!

cosgroveb 15y ago
Merchant adoption is also necessary. It will take a long time to convince small businesses to install these readers without some sort of subsidy.
- pitdesi 15y ago
  True that you need merchant adoption. This whole thing will take a lot of time... but the subsidies wouldn't need to be that much - NFC is a $30 add-on. They can be in a lot of places fairly quickly. http://www.fastcompany.com/1741837/wave-and-pay-nfc-credit-cards-are-definitely-in-bound?partner=rss http://www.fastcompany.com/1741837/wave-and-pay-nfc-credit-c...
- jakehow 15y ago
  It works on the Mastercard PayPass hardware. Adoption is already pretty far down the road on the POS side. EDIT: Go here to search for Paypass merchants in your hood: http://www.google.com/wallet/where-it-works.html http://www.google.com/wallet/where-it-works.html
  - glhaynes 15y ago
    But until it's essentially universal, that still shifts burden to the user: they have to look around and try to figure out whether this alternative payment method is accepted at this merchant. Why wouldn't they just whip out their credit card that they know is going to be accepted? EDIT: What I mean to say is: if credit-card-swiping were particularly onerous, I could see this easily taking off. But since it's not (at all!) and people are trying to replace it with something that seems equally-if-not-more burdensome, it's hard for me to see why this would catch on outside tech folks that mostly do it for the geekfactor.
    - jackolas 15y ago
      I think the problem they're approaching is having too many cards like loyalty cards and such. That's a real problem unlike swiping any card.
    - jarek 15y ago
      I don't know if I'm like most people in this regard, but I'll carry my phone with little issues but I'd prefer to carry as little plastic in my wallet as possible. If I had an NFC phone and this service was available where I live, I'd be removing my Paypass Mastercard from my wallet the moment I got home.
    - estel 15y ago
      In terms of usability, the one-tap pay systems that are rolling out (certainly in the UK) for low value transactions (no PIN or signature required) with bank-issued debit/credit cards is a huge leap forward with respect of speed of transaction.
    - potatolicious 15y ago
      There are a few killer features that come to mind (though I'm not sure if Google is already looking at them): - no paper receipts. Do I want my receipts? In an ideal world, of course, but in real-life that just means more paper junk. Receipts are also awfully easy to lose - making returns onerous. Imagine having an electronic receipt instead of juggling all of that paper! - doubling up on loyalty cards and payment. Instead of swiping a loyalty card once, and then again for actual payment, a NFC transaction can potentially do both at once. This also reduces the number of cards I have to carry around dramatically. Bonus points if they can make this work with my library card (with the added bonus: if I'm late returning a book, they can just charge me). - more fine-grained budgeting. Right now Mint knows if I spent $50 at Staples. It doesn't know what, though. An itemized electronic transaction record would tell my budgeting software that the $50 was spent on printer ink, instead of, say, a new gadget. - immediate feedback without extensive POS modification. I've noticed some grocery store checkouts now have a secondary printer that spits out special offers to you (assuming you scan your frequent shopper card). This can be expanded upon greatly without modifying POS hardware - i.e., pushing promotions directly to your phone.
  - rdl 15y ago
    I worked for ViVOtech (one of the biggest PayPass Point of Sale vendors) back in 2003; it is always surprising to me how widely deployed the readers seem to be, and how little actual use there is, even today. Something like this could go a long way toward adoption, but I'd be a bit concerned that RFID/NFC might be bypassed by cheap CCD/CMOS.
stcredzero 15y ago
This is big, but not because NFC will be a tremendously better way to pay for stuff. This will just act to get a high population of capable NFC devices out to the general public. NFC will enable a whole lot of latent demand for data exchange in the mobile context. Wherever/whenever people are away from computers and need to exchange a few hundred KB or less, there will be opportunity. (Specialized instruments/readers that people read data from of, then key into another device.) It will need to avoid the pitfalls of the previous technologies. (IR)
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  It will need to avoid the pitfalls of the previous technologies. (IR) Audio, bluetooth, QR codes/camera as well. All easily capable of data exchange between devices, all present on a vast number of phones, all hobbled by lack of implementation and standards. Why wont NFC end up just like Bluetooth? "I don't have it switched on" "I don't have the same version" "we need to pair the devices? Mine says it cannot see any" "type in what code where?" "I can only support an NFC headset, not any data transfer protocols", etc.?
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    That's a useful list: - manual steps - device pairing - switched on/off - incompatibility - version incompatibility - protocol incompatibility If they've fixed these problems, it will succeed. If not, then it will be another failed attempt. On the plus side, a lot of scientific, technical, and inventory equipment already does NFC.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    I actually thought NFC would solve Bluetooth's major problem: pairing. Right now pairing a device is a pain in the ass - an endless, meandering series of menu diving, waiting, syncing, and not knowing if you're doing the right thing. Imagine being able to touch your Bluetooth headset to the back of your phone. Or touch your phone to the "sync" patch on a Bluetooth keyboard and have it just do it?

by 51Cards 15y ago

cosgroveb 15y ago

Merchant adoption is also necessary. It will take a long time to convince small businesses to install these readers without some sort of subsidy.

pitdesi 15y ago
True that you need merchant adoption. This whole thing will take a lot of time... but the subsidies wouldn't need to be that much - NFC is a $30 add-on. They can be in a lot of places fairly quickly. http://www.fastcompany.com/1741837/wave-and-pay-nfc-credit-cards-are-definitely-in-bound?partner=rss http://www.fastcompany.com/1741837/wave-and-pay-nfc-credit-c...
jakehow 15y ago
It works on the Mastercard PayPass hardware. Adoption is already pretty far down the road on the POS side. EDIT: Go here to search for Paypass merchants in your hood: http://www.google.com/wallet/where-it-works.html http://www.google.com/wallet/where-it-works.html
- glhaynes 15y ago
  But until it's essentially universal, that still shifts burden to the user: they have to look around and try to figure out whether this alternative payment method is accepted at this merchant. Why wouldn't they just whip out their credit card that they know is going to be accepted? EDIT: What I mean to say is: if credit-card-swiping were particularly onerous, I could see this easily taking off. But since it's not (at all!) and people are trying to replace it with something that seems equally-if-not-more burdensome, it's hard for me to see why this would catch on outside tech folks that mostly do it for the geekfactor.
  - jackolas 15y ago
    I think the problem they're approaching is having too many cards like loyalty cards and such. That's a real problem unlike swiping any card.
  - jarek 15y ago
    I don't know if I'm like most people in this regard, but I'll carry my phone with little issues but I'd prefer to carry as little plastic in my wallet as possible. If I had an NFC phone and this service was available where I live, I'd be removing my Paypass Mastercard from my wallet the moment I got home.
  - estel 15y ago
    In terms of usability, the one-tap pay systems that are rolling out (certainly in the UK) for low value transactions (no PIN or signature required) with bank-issued debit/credit cards is a huge leap forward with respect of speed of transaction.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    There are a few killer features that come to mind (though I'm not sure if Google is already looking at them): - no paper receipts. Do I want my receipts? In an ideal world, of course, but in real-life that just means more paper junk. Receipts are also awfully easy to lose - making returns onerous. Imagine having an electronic receipt instead of juggling all of that paper! - doubling up on loyalty cards and payment. Instead of swiping a loyalty card once, and then again for actual payment, a NFC transaction can potentially do both at once. This also reduces the number of cards I have to carry around dramatically. Bonus points if they can make this work with my library card (with the added bonus: if I'm late returning a book, they can just charge me). - more fine-grained budgeting. Right now Mint knows if I spent $50 at Staples. It doesn't know what, though. An itemized electronic transaction record would tell my budgeting software that the $50 was spent on printer ink, instead of, say, a new gadget. - immediate feedback without extensive POS modification. I've noticed some grocery store checkouts now have a secondary printer that spits out special offers to you (assuming you scan your frequent shopper card). This can be expanded upon greatly without modifying POS hardware - i.e., pushing promotions directly to your phone.
- rdl 15y ago
  I worked for ViVOtech (one of the biggest PayPass Point of Sale vendors) back in 2003; it is always surprising to me how widely deployed the readers seem to be, and how little actual use there is, even today. Something like this could go a long way toward adoption, but I'd be a bit concerned that RFID/NFC might be bypassed by cheap CCD/CMOS.

stcredzero 15y ago

This is big, but not because NFC will be a tremendously better way to pay for stuff. This will just act to get a high population of capable NFC devices out to the general public. NFC will enable a whole lot of latent demand for data exchange in the mobile context. Wherever/whenever people are away from computers and need to exchange a few hundred KB or less, there will be opportunity. (Specialized instruments/readers that people read data from of, then key into another device.) It will need to avoid the pitfalls of the previous technologies. (IR)

jodrellblank 15y ago
It will need to avoid the pitfalls of the previous technologies. (IR) Audio, bluetooth, QR codes/camera as well. All easily capable of data exchange between devices, all present on a vast number of phones, all hobbled by lack of implementation and standards. Why wont NFC end up just like Bluetooth? "I don't have it switched on" "I don't have the same version" "we need to pair the devices? Mine says it cannot see any" "type in what code where?" "I can only support an NFC headset, not any data transfer protocols", etc.?
- stcredzero 15y ago
  That's a useful list: - manual steps - device pairing - switched on/off - incompatibility - version incompatibility - protocol incompatibility If they've fixed these problems, it will succeed. If not, then it will be another failed attempt. On the plus side, a lot of scientific, technical, and inventory equipment already does NFC.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  I actually thought NFC would solve Bluetooth's major problem: pairing. Right now pairing a device is a pain in the ass - an endless, meandering series of menu diving, waiting, syncing, and not knowing if you're doing the right thing. Imagine being able to touch your Bluetooth headset to the back of your phone. Or touch your phone to the "sync" patch on a Bluetooth keyboard and have it just do it?