NFC stands for Not For Consumption as banks and telcos haggle over terms

While there are countless trials of NFC for wireless payments going on around the world - led mainly by Visa and MasterCard - the technology on trial differs between them and is also different across markets. It seems that no one outside of Korea and Japan is really ready to take the big plunge.

Even more critical is the question of how all the parties involved will actually make any money from NFC payment services. Nobody seems sure and it seems most likely that the consumer will end up footing the bill for convenience.

For those that attended last week’s IIR Payments & NFC Strategies Conference held in Budapest the chasm between parties did not even look close to be being bridged. The perennial arguments about who is entitled to what when NFC actually rolls out, clouded what once looked like a promising and useful service.

However, none of the parties involved seemed the slightest bit interested in giving way on what they think is their rightful space.

The telecommunications and finance industries have never really been the best of friends. It’s quite understandable when you consider that telcos mastered the art of micro-billing and handling massive numbers of transactions in real-time years ago, whilst banks and credit card companies still largely work in batch mode with overnight updates.

Mobile service providers that hold massive floats from prepayments and allow those funds to be used for the purchase of parking, goods via vending machines and online content are acting just like banks.