My eyeballs nearly fell out of their sockets after watching a video posted by the boys and girls over at Engadget that shows a demonstation for “Nokia Swipe”, a mobile payments system that uses NFC based technology, but then I clicked through to where the video was hosted and was saddened to see that it’s nothing more than a homework assignment done by someone named Bob Haarmans out of Miami, Florida. I’m sharing it with you however on the eve of Nokia World because it’s something I hope becomes a reality in one form of another. Now that Nokia has new management on top, maybe the direction of the company can be steered away from internet services, which let’s face it are mostly over rated and best left to hipsters working in San Francisco, to financial services.
No one has the balls, nor the financial backing, to compete with the likes of Visa or American Express, but what if Nokia did? With trials going on all over Europe and America there’s a competition taking place over ownership of the customer. Which companies will take those few precious cents to process every transaction you make, and which company will take the biggest cut, are the questions that are going to erupt a battle of epic proportions during the next few years.
The first killer app of mobile phones was voice. Then SMS came and thumbs around the world cried in agony. Next there was RIM with their push email that ruined millions of people’s work/life balance. Finally in the mid to late 2000s I personally believe it was GPS, which has made crossing the street a near impossible task for me, that made people want to upgrade to advanced devices. All of these changes, these services, came about because of a new technology. NFC, or the ability to touch your device against other devices and objects and perform an action, will be the next Big thing. Yes, with a capital B.