Logos are important. They create a sense of familiarity, and in the case of brands, they can project a certain perceived social status. You may think you’re above that, but here’s a question for you: How many times have you avoided going to a particular store just because there wasn’t a Visa sticker placed somewhere on their front door? Anyway, let’s talk mobile payments. The future of cash will be based on near field communication (NFC) enabled mobile phones, no one doubts this. To get consumers to start using it however, they first need a smartphone that has NFC, and then they need to start shopping at retailers who are equipped to handle tap and go transactions. There’s an official NFC logo already out in circulation created by the NFC Forum, but Europe’s 5 largest operators (Telefónica O2, Vodafone, Deutsche Telecom, Telecom Italia and France Telecom Orange) aren’t exactly fond of it, so they’ve joined forces and are now working on their own replacement.
Speaking to NFC World, Nick Wilkin, Senior Public Relations Manager at O2, said: “This is something we all think is necessary. It’s very much in the discussion stage at the moment, but we all agree it’s something we should have. Whether we use the three waves you see on contactless credit cards today, or make a new design, the point is to make sure it’s as easy as possible for customers to see whether they can use their phone at a checkout. SMS only took off once there was interoperability between technology standards and operators, and we need the same for NFC.”
If these operators wanted to do the cool, web 2.0, crowd sourcing thing, they’d stage a Pan-European design contest, but whatever, all we care about is that they want to make NFC as interoperable as SMS, and that sounds like music to our ears!