February 03, 2010 - NEW YORK -- With four in 10 Americans saying they "cannot live without" them, cell phones are quickly becoming key components of retailing. The thinking is that convenience store customers will soon prefer the convenience of paying via an electronic wallet in their handsets, rather than cash or plastic.
With
smartphone ownership expected to grow, mobile industry players foresee
a day in the near future when retailers -- equipped with
near-field-communication (NFC) terminals like those used now to accept contactless card payments -- will serve customers who keep their cash, debit, credit and loyalty cards in their phone applications.
"In the long term, I think NFC will be rolled out into
the retail/convenience channel," said C. Red Gillen, senior analyst for
Celent, a financial services consulting firm focused on the application
of information technology. "However, this will not be overnight.
Rather, it will be an organic process as merchants replace older card
terminals with new card terminals that have an added NFC
functionality."
The c-store channel already is dabbling in contactless payment, perhaps the first step toward mobile payment. As CSNews reported last June, Sheetz rolled out First Data's GO-Tag solution, which is packaged with a prepaid card
and a small sticky-backed plastic RFID tag that can be affixed to a
handset. Customers may purchase the $50 or $100 GO-Tag reloadable Visa
payWave card/tag combination, activate them and use either to pay for
transactions wherever Visa payWave is accepted. Customers also may
transfer funds to the card/tag via a phone call.
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