In an exclusive interview with Talkstandards, Nav Bains (GSMA Director of Mobile Money) emphasized the “lack of commercially available Single Wire Protocol NFC handsets” and “deployed contactless infrastructure at the point of sale” as the major barriers to widespread market adoption of mobile NFC technology.
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This exclusive interview with Nav Bains – Mobile Money Director, GSMA – was conducted for Talkstandards.com via email during October 2010 in relation to the Open Forum Mobile Money for the Unbanked.

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There are currently around 1 million people worldwide who, although without access to traditional banking facilities, own a mobile phone. Further this number of unbanked mobile users is expected to grow to around 1.7 billion by 2012. This growth is driving the development of alternative banking systems, particularly in developing countries. Mobile money allows the transferring of funds between individuals or the payment in retail settings using mobile phones.

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As mobile phone usage increases all over the world, new mobile services are continuing to be developed. The reach of mobile phone networks, compared to traditional finance channels, offers promising opportunities to new entrants in the money transfer service market. While globally there are only 500 thousand bank branches (1.4 million ATMs), there are approximately around 3 billion mobile phone users – increasing at a rate of 30 each day.

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In February, 24 of the world’s largest telecoms announced the formation of an alliance – the Wholesale Applications Community – to provided a unified and open platform for the rapidly growing – both in magnitude and fragmentation – mobile application market. The stated aim to enable developers to “deploy a single application across multiple devices (through the use of standard technologies) and across multiple operators”, which will lower costs and improve both the quality and quantity of mobile applications available to consumers.

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As the number of mobile phones steadily increase in the world and handsets are used for much more than calling and texting, Mobile Near Field Communications (NFC) offer users the ability to use their phone as a mobile wallet. However, even though consumers would welcome such solutions, NFC deployment is sluggish.
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