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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are too many loyalty cards. I usually won't sign up for them unless it's for a store I go to all the time, because I don't want to carry them around. I'll carry one for the grocery store, but not places I only go to occasionally like Walgreens or Best Buy. With Google Wallet you won't need to carry them, so they won't be as much of a burden, so you can have more of them. Merchants will like this and consumers will too.
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.
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-c...
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)
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.?
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.
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?
I don't think NFC is something that is intended for headsets. The wikipedia page says that its a collection of technologies that typically require 4cm or less distance, which would pretty much defeat the purpose of having a headset.
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!