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NFC Retail Marketing & Mobile Payments: Business Models & Forecasts 2012-2017
Juniper Research sees mobile payments, along with mobile ticketing and mobile coupons as one of the
most important mobile applications driving the mCommerce market today.
Applications which incorporate NFC benefit from an elegance and simplicity for the user which it is
difficult for other mobile technologies and channels, e.g. SMS or barcodes, to emulate. NFC applications
can be invoked by a simple physical tap, rather than the need to open up a mobile application.
Additionally, the degree of accuracy in determining the mobile users position is far greater using NFC
than GPS, especially inside buildings or in streets in built-up areas, providing a level of assurance and
greater accuracy in targeting for the originator. In fact one vendor we spoke to characterised NFC as
barcodes on steroids.
Whilst the application of NFC technology adds to the momentum of mobile commerce applications
generally, the NFC dimension has brought with it a degree of complexity which has tended to offset the
natural elegance of NFC interactions. There is no doubt, however, that the enthusiasm for NFC
payments is growing.
This report aims to provide an understanding of the primary trends which can be discerned within the
rapidly-developing NFC marketplace, together with an overview of the primary drivers which are serving
to enhance growth prospects and the constraints which threaten to inhibit them. It also includes a
discussion on the prevalent (and emerging) business models, together with top-line regional forecasts for
the NFC Retail Payments market.
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Customer retention
Customer acquisition
Shopping in Store:
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Mobile Ticketing Evolution: NFC, Forecasts & Markets 2012-2016 [February 2012]
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MNO Investment
Building on the success of NFC trials, usually measured by user satisfaction ratings, the real indicator of
market traction is whether there is investment being made into NFC infrastructure by MNOs and
Financial Institutions. 2011 appeared to be the year when, MNOs at least, have started investing in such
infrastructure supporting the promises of intent made via the GSMA, the industry body representing
mobile operators.
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Source: Ericsson3
All three leading cities (Singapore, London and Stockholm) have made substantial strides in unifying their
ICT structures and obtaining commercial agreements to facilitate either or both NFC/contactless
payments or ticketing.
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4
http://www.ericsson.com/networkedsociety/city-index/
Mobile World Congress 2012 Mobile Money: Emerging Markets Seminar [March 2012]
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Retailer Readiness
Again, the unlocking of the NFC handset bottleneck has increased the focus on the readiness of retailers
to accept contactless and NFC payments. Until now, the retailer readiness constraint has centred around
the need for retailers to invest in NFC-enabled POS terminals; which has been particularly unattractive as
they have only recently made investments to support CHIP and PIN - hence delaying the move to NFC.
However, the natural churn of equipment will eventually solve this problem as new POS terminals are
shipping with contactless capability as standard; nevertheless retailers still face challenges in training staff
to accept contactless or NFC payments.
Apart from the equipment and staff training, the more fundamental constraint is that of the retailers
involvement in the NFC ecosystem and their own business case. Until now retailers, deliberately or
otherwise, have not been major contributors to the NFC payments solution debate. For a retailer then,
contactless and NFC payments are not a given and the business model has yet to be proven to them.
User Readiness
Despite the availability of NFC-enabled handsets, mobile wallet trials and early commercial deployments of
NFC payment schemes, opinions are divided as to whether users are ready to adopt this form of payment.
There are a number of aspects to this concern:
1) Whether users are ready for NFC. It is noticeable that some ecosystem players are promoting
other uses for NFC rather than payments e.g. device connectivity, information tag reading,
integration within games etc. The rationale for promoting non-payment applications is to gain user
familiarisation and acceptance of the technology so that users move to NFC payments already
confident with the concept and look-and-feel of NFC interactions. A use case illustrating the
need for building such user confidence is when either the mobile device or the POS terminal does
not have NFC activated prior to the intended interaction. In this situation the tap does not result
in a positive interaction and the user may be left unclear as to what has happened. However,
standards now specify that this initial tap results in NFC becoming enabled, so that a double tap
completes the interaction. Users have to become familiar with this situation in order to become
comfortable with an NFC payments transaction that may appear to fail on first tap.
2) Whether users are ready for NFC Payments. The essence of an NFC payment is that it is as
simple to use as a contactless card. If the mobile user interface or ergonomics of the NFC payment
is not user-friendly then (apart from the VAS opportunity) users may well decide to simply use a
contactless card instead.
3) Whether users will use NFC Payments. Currently NFC payments are limited in transaction
value in PIN-free mode (a PIN must be entered to authorise transactions above a certain threshold).
Although this mode of operation has been instituted to lower the perceived security risk of NFC
transactions (see next point), it can also discourage adoption if a consumer is purchasing item(s)
near or over the transaction limit.
4) Whether users are comfortable with NFC Payment Security. Despite the fact that NFC
payments use the same payments networks, encryption, protection and security protocols as cards
and have extra layers of security provided by the wallet application, the average user may still
perceive NFC payments to be less secure than a card transaction. The recent brute force PIN
security vulnerability discovered in Google Wallet has not allayed fears in this area.
Customer Care
Alongside the constraint of user readiness is the issue of Customer Care. It is vital that users know who
to contact in the event of a problem with their service and this not at all intuitive. For example, if an NFC
payment fails to be authorised or complete at a retailer POS terminal, who does the user go to for
resolution? Is it the retailer, the MNO, the wallet issuer or the financial institution? Customer care
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Consortia Status
Single Player Consortia
Although this term appears contradictory, we use this classification to denote NFC payment projects like
Google Wallet which has already been described in this report. Although Google is clearly not the only
player in the project, Google Wallet has been successfully launched because Google, as a single, well
known player, secured individual agreements with a single handset manufacturer (Samsung), a single MNO
(Sprint), multiple credit card companies and multiple retailers to rollout a service.
Nevertheless, Google is now facing problems in extending its reach as it is currently restricted in both
handset and MNO distribution channels. Recent reports have suggested that Google is in discussion with
AT&T and Verizon to increase adoption, but on a revenue-sharing basis with the MNOs.
MNO-led Consortia
By far the most common consortia or JV currently being announced are those where multiple MNOs are
seen working together, usually in a single country or region. Examples of this are ISIS (US), Project Oscar
(UK) and 4T (Scandinavia).
In some cases MNO-led consortia have failed, for example, in Belgium6.
http://mobilemarketingandtechnology.com/2012/02/26/belgian-mobile-payment-initiative-falls-apart/
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Integrated Consortia
We use the term Integrated to express consortia where a joint-ownership scheme model is adopted
across many ecosystem players and where no single player or sector dominates the consortium. We have
already mentioned the government-backed and initiated scheme of the Singapore IDA but the prime
example of this form of cooperation in the private sector is the French Cityzi project under the auspices
of the AFSCM (Association Francaise du Sans Contact Mobile).
Figure 5: Cityzi Branding
Source: AFSCM
Although the AFSCM was established in 2008 by three MNOs, it was done so on a non-profit making basis
and from the outset included banks, transport operators and retail marketing partners. As can be seen
from the above figure it promotes itself under the Cityzi brand and signage, giving it a unified public
identity.
Conclusion
There is a clear progression in the above consortia models, and with them, in our view an increasing level
of success. It is significant, perhaps, that there are no instances today of Financial Institution-led or
Retailer-led consortia; however these variants are not excluded as possibilities as the following sections
will indicate. It is still too early to judge how the consortia will evolve and whether they will grow
inorganically or fragment. In Juniper Researchs view, except for the Integrated Consortia, the other
models will have a lifespan of up to three years and some considerably less.
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Indeed, we believe given the maturity of the developed Asian markets, and consequent comparatively
limited scope for future growth that the scale of transactions in both Western Europe and North
America will have eclipsed those in the Far East & China by 2016, and that the former region will account
for some 35% of NFC retail payments by the following year.
NFC Retail Marketing & Mobile Payments: Business Models & Forecasts 2012-2017
In the full report, Junipers second edition assessment of the NFC Retail Market & Mobile Payments
industry, the analyst house provides an in-depth analysis of the NFC Retail Payments market ecosystem,
highlighting the primary business models which have emerged and the key drivers behind recent growth. It
examines the roles played by network operators, financial institutions, OTT providers and retailers, and
through a series of case studies explores the opportunities for each of these players.
Based on a combination of primary research interviews with leading industry participants and secondary
research, Juniper also provides regional (and, in an accompanying Excel dataset, national) forecasts of NFC
handset adoption, NFC retail transaction volumes and values, operator retail payment management
revenues and NFC coupon and ticketing volumes.
Finally, the report includes a vendor matrix which offers an assessment of selected vendors that are active
in the NFC Mobile Commerce space, summarising player capability. This is accompanied by vendor
profiles which conclude with Junipers views of the key strengths and strategic development opportunities
for each vendor.
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