8 April 2009

Great Article

http://www.nfctimes.com/news/citi-makes-its-first-move-mobile-payment

As a friend told me this week “if you put an NFC sticker on a bicycle.. is that mobile payment?” Sure a sticker on the back of a phone is not necessarily “Mobile payment” but NFC has taken so long.. who cares? Lets just get started!

Will Citi/MasterCard beat BAC/Visa to market with a US NFC sticker rollout?… Regardless of who is first out of the gate,  I think it will be a win/win for both institutions as significant marketing money is necessary to get this moving. Citi has the upper hand w/ numerous NFC pilots, established card marketing and 55M card accounts.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aWpzGE431k]

Although Citi is first out of the gate, Visa has put together a much more impressive array of services which will work for any card and any bank, with more thoughtful “integration” (See FirstData/Device Fidelity/Monitise).

“Let the NFC games begin”.

Note to NFC times:

This US initiative did not originate in Citi’s growth ventures, but rather with US Cards (likely led by mobile guru Kurt Weiss).