NFC – A step closer

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The biometric craze is here but the place to invest is NFC

  • I have long believed that there are two barriers to the take-off of NFC and mobile based payments.
    • First:  Device security. Using devices as wallets remains hideously limited at the moment because device security is so poor.
    • The advent of isometric sensors in devices looks set to change a lot of that.
    • Second: NFC is a horribly fragmented standard meaning that many devices won’t work with many touch points.
    • Hence the dream of NFC taking over the world remains just that; a dream.
  • Last year Apple purchased AuthenTec, a finger print sensor maker, for $350m fuelling speculation (including my own) that it would release a product including this component.
  • Since that acquisition, the rest of the biometric world has gone ballistic making investment in this theme a very dangerous game.
  • It now looks like Apple will be including a fingerprint sensor in its next iPhone.
  • This is important because it means that everyone else will have to follow suit.
  • This effectively removes one of the big hurdles to the take-off of NFC and mobile based payments.
  • At the moment one can pay with NFC but unless it’s a very small transaction, (like a metro fare) one also has to enter a PIN code.
  • This completely destroys the use case for NFC bases mobile payments and users just can’t be bothered.
  • With a fingerprint sensor, the user authenticates every time he unlocks the phone, meaning that NFC can be used for much larger transactions and the use case really is; touch and go.
  • If Apple also includes NFC in its devices, that too, would be give a lift to NFC, but at the moment this looks less likely to happen imminently.
  • This would effectively leave the standardisation problem as the only remaining hurdle.
  • While demand outside of travel cards has been pretty muted, there has not been much incentive to solve this problem.
  • Hopefully, with better visibility on demand, the NFC industry will realise that it is only harming itself and will get together to create a working standard.
  • This is one of the few cases where openness and interoperability is likely to result in a much greater opportunity for all the players.
  • From an investment standpoint, I would argue that instead of losing one’s shirt in playing the biometric game, look slightly ahead and take a look at the lateral play; NFC.

RICHARD WINDSOR

Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.

Blog Comments

> “Second: NFC is a horribly fragmented standard meaning that many devices won’t work with many touch points.”

Apple might be getting into the mobile payments game, but it is not necessarily through NFC. All signs I see point to Bluetooth LE instead. Yes, it means one more standard to support on top of many variations of NFC for payment systems at first, but Apple is big enough to make that a de facto standard and it has most of the high income customers, so it could become the standard to deploy in countries that has been in a wait-and-see mode with NFC payments systems, such as the US. (Ask Starbucks, if a payment system is coming with the new iPhone, it is the most likely launch partner.) Once there is a critical mass, Asian countries can switch over.

On top of the freedom to ignore NFC variants and avoiding confusion for customers, Bluetooth offers one more big advantage for Apple: BT is already in the phone, so there is no need for new circuitry to take up space that could be used for a bigger battery or a better camera. In addition, I expect Apple to use Bluetooth LE for device discovery and pairing in its “auto-config” peer to peer networking before devices start transferring data between each other through WiFi. Rumors say it is also pushing BT LE for wireless sensors and wearable devices to synchronize.