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.