Nothing,

Absolutely nothing.

It is a gadget thing, it is a Google’s advertising thing – they know a bit or two about ads. And the value proposition is: now you (customer) can touch instead of swipe, and don’t have to carry around all that plastic in your wallet.

Admittedly, NFC enabled mobile (as in mobile phone) payment could be a convenient way to pay. Convenience, however, does not make a business case unless you can charge for it, and there is no word about charging for NFC facilitated payments.

What has not been tackled by NFC based innovations – see all the related news and announcements – is the business case and how it fits into the payments value chain.

Is it going to remove the plastic and the card vendors (the likes of Gemalto) from the equation? Is there a saving on plastic and chip and all the supply chain and stocking baggage that comes with that? Or is the plastic problem now replaced with a mobile and NFC chip baggage?

The fact is, NFC still requires a terminal (signal receiver), until that is removed or replaced with some commodity kit, there is nothing interesting about NFC and the likes. For example, consider the following where the actual POS device is replaced by the customer’s device (smartphone).

Could this scenario use NFC for the technical implementation? Maybe. However, until there is a business case for NFC in mobile payment, it will remain a hype, an attempt to carve out a buck or two from the payments value chain.

In the meantime, the really interesting developments are happening at Square and ISISPOS POS and the likes.

I have been researching the mobile applications space looking for a good (it is subjective, I know) technology stack that meets the following wish-list:

• Future proof (to some extent) – shifting in device types, geometry and OS-es will not render the stack unusable in over the next couple of months, maybe a year or two. This point also includes support for a variety of devices based on their use and market share.
• Does not require a steep learning curve for most development shops – existing skills available (in abundance) in the IT industry today would be able to match the proposed stack without much skills update, preferably only learning new APIs and not a whole new language and programming paradigm.
• Does not cost an arm and a leg – at least it is free to start developing and testing (simulator and device) and remains low cost (subjective again) going forward
• Plays nicely with current technology stacks – depending on the technology stack available in the environment where the mobile applications will be deployed – in my case this would be Java/Spring/Adobe Flex.
• Fast and Easy prototyping and demo – in other words a single person in a few weeks (weekends) can produce a working prototype or demo to sell the idea of the application.
• The end result is top-notch – it takes advantage (perhaps not fully) of the device specifics and features that make an application pleasant and usable from an end user experience point of view.

There are many good articles about the comparison of native and Web applications, like this one: Mobile apps choices: Native Apps vs Web Apps.

During my researches however, I came to like the technologies that are somewhere in between native and Web applications. It is a blurry, gray area for applications. They are developed like Web applications, but look and behave like a fully featured mobile application.

Two of these favored technologies are PhoneGap and Appcelerator/Titanium. Another good article on these two are here: A deeper look at appcelerator and phonegap.

Another intriguing technology is from the Mono team – MonoTouch and Mono for Android. It is also an inbetweener type, although more on the native application side, reusing a great deal of C# .NET skills for development. Still thinking through the future-proof valuation of this stack.

In the meantime, the search for the best technology stack for mobile applications continues…