Google Ready To Rule NFC-Based Mobile Payments?

itwbennett writes "Google may seem like an odd pioneer for mobile payments, says blogger Ryan Faas, but according to recent reports, the company is developing its own NFC payment solution. Here's why Faas thinks Google has a leg up in this emerging market: 'Google does have a lot of clout when it comes to NFC because the recent launch of the Nexus S and Gingerbread (the most recent Android release) offer the first truly widespread smartphone/NFC integration. That could give Google significant bargaining power. It also makes a certain sense to expect Google to try to lead in this area when you consider that the company is hyping mobile search and recommendation features.'"

NFC

[FauxPasIII]

For those wondering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication [wikipedia.org]

Re:NFC and Google = Business

[morgan_greywolf]

EDITORS: Please bitchslap the spammer.

Thanks.

Re:NFC

[Mike Van Pelt]

VHS became more popular than Betamax because an entire movie would fit on a single VHS tape. For most consumers, that factor far outweighed the somewhat better picture, and arguable "technical superiority". Much later, Sony produced Betamax decks that could record more than one (1) hour of programming, but by then, VHS had too much of a lead.

Re:NFC

[Xtifr]

Most folks who have analyzed the videotape format war agree Betamax was technically superior, at least at first.

That's basically true, as far as picture quality went.

Technical superiority played no part in the ultimate victory of VHS over Betamax.

That's not so true. VHS wasn't limited to 1 hour like Beta was at first, and that one detail of technical superiority may have played a part, although opinions are divided whether it was a major factor.

In essence, VHS was popular because simply it was popular

That's definitely not true. VHS was cheaper, and wasn't subject to the whims and restrictions of a single company. There were rumors--quite false, but they may have had an impact on the market--that Sony wouldn't license Beta technology for porn. For many people, though, VHS was simply good enough, given the differences in price, and those who insisted on paying extra for Beta were often perceived as pretentious and yuppie, somewhat like hardcore audiophiles are often perceived today.

Price and play time are usually considered to be the two main factors in VHS's ultimate triumph. The network effect was no doubt a contributing factor in the long run, but only after other factors had given VHS a solid lead. For that matter, grandparent poster is incorrect when he says Beta was first. Actually, Beta was second, and VHS was third. But when we're talking about implementing an open standard, as NFC seems to be, the whole analogy of the (incompatible) video tape format wars seems to fail big time. This seems to me more analogous to the competition among early VHS manufacturers, all working to the same standard. And here, early mover is more likely to be a factor, I suspect, but price is also going to be a big factor. Overall, though, I think the market is more likely to remain competitive, with multiple companies offering a variety of products.

Re:NFC

[swillden]

NFC isn't RFID. It's RFID plus a simple extension to allow it to both read and be read..

It's not just RFID. NFC is two completely different RF technologies packaged together. One is contactless smart card technology (ISO 14443), at the frequency 13.56 Mhz, which enables very close-range (centimeters) relatively high-bandwidth (up to 800 kbps) bi-directional communication and is the technology used by the better contactless credit card payment systems, using cryptographic security. The other is what's normally called RFID, I forget which ISO standard, but it's at 900 Mhz and functions at much longer ranges (up to a meter or two) but only enables very simple communication. RFID tags are typically very "stupid" -- no microprocessor and many of them can't do anything other than respond with a number fixed at manufacture time when energized by a reader. Others allow the short numeric code they contain to be changed.

NFC actually enables the phone to operate as either reader or card/tag with both of these RF technologies.

This means that your phone can, in theory, act as a contactless smart card payment terminal, allowing you to accept credit card payments from an ordinary contactless credit card, or from another phone acting as a card. And, obviously, your phone can act as a contactless credit card -- but one with much better security because the phone has the ability to authenticate the user where the card doesn't, necessarily. Well, better security unless your phone gets rooted...

Oh, and of course, you'll be able to put multiple credit card accounts on your phone, so you can eliminate your cards from your wallet.

An NFC phone can also act as RFID reader, meaning that as retailers shift from putting barcodes on packages to cheap RFID tags, you'll be able to scan merchandise with your phone (you can do this now with phone cameras and UPC codes, but it's much less fiddly with RFID). Other use cases that get bandied about are things like embedding RFID tags in movie posters so you can scan the poster and get taken to a web site with more information (really, this is a use case that is OFTEN discussed in the industry as a sample application, as lame as it is). Finally, an NFC phone can act as an RFID tag. A commonly-suggested application for that is simple loyalty cards, like the Subway card that gets you a free sandwich after so many purchases. So you can get rid of those from your wallet also.

All of these features will, of course, be controllable by the phone's software, so they can be completely disabled when they should not be used, which is very nice for security and privacy. Again, assuming your phone remains under your control.