Despite the large amount of interest and excitement surrounding Near Field Communications (NFC), PayPal has come out saying that the technology will fail to live up to its expectations.
PayPal’s head of mobile, David Marcus, is skeptical: “For NFC to succeed you need consumers to have the handsets, and merchants to install the terminals. It will take time for NFC to get mass adoption. By the time NFC catches up, we’ll be in a world that will move away from the point-of-sales terminal.”
PayPal is working on developing alternative payment systems with lower barriers to entry. For example, one UK pizza place has a PayPal app that allows customers to pay from their mobile device without using a terminal or a credit card. Apple has been developing similar alternatives through its iTunes technology. Consumers can scan a barcode with their iPhone, and then pay for the item using their Apple ID username and password.
PayPal has 106 million active customers and processed $118 billion in 25 different currencies in 2011.
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