There will be more than half a billion mobile users of NFC (Near Field Communication) contactless payment services by the end of 2019, up from 101 million this year, according to a prediction from Juniper Research.
The report argued that Apple’s introduction of an NFC-based payment mechanism — Apple Pay — would stimulate the wider marketplace, helping to address the key challenges of contactless awareness and acceptance.
At the same time, the report observed that NFC solutions utilising HCE (Host Card Emulation) were steadily gaining traction within the banking sector. It said that several — including BBVA and Bankinter in Spain and CUA in Australia — had already launched commercial services, with pilot schemes in operation in countries such as Russia and New Zealand.
