PRINCETON JUNCTION, N.J. — Recognizing the growing excitement around using mobile phones to pay for goods and services, the Smart Card Alliance has announced that its Contactless Payments Council expects to expand its focus to include near field communications and mobile payments.
According to a news release, the newly named Contactless and Mobile Payments Council also has named new officers, a steering committee, recent achievements and upcoming projects.
"Consumers, mobile carriers, banks and technology providers are all clamoring to learn more about proximity mobile payments," said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "The Contactless and Mobile Payments Council has quickly become a primary educational resource, delivering extensive materials on what the technology is, how it works, what implementation methods are available and what the best practices are."
Conducting and publishing research about how merchants, consumers, financial issuers, mobile operators and technology providers view contactless and mobile payments was the priority for the council last year.
The council's Mobile Payments Work Group published "Proximity Mobile Payments Business Scenarios: Research Report on Stakeholder Perspectives," which finds that 86 percent of industry stakeholders believe NFC-based proximity mobile payments will be adopted and will likely bring together banks, mobile operators, merchants, handset manufacturers and other service providers.
The report is a comprehensive follow-up to the white paper also published last year, "Proximity Mobile Payments: Leveraging NFC and the Contactless Financial Payments Infrastructure."
The council, and the council's Merchant Work Group, researched and educated merchants last year through a merchant Web survey and published "Accepting Contactless Payments: A Merchant Guide." The work group is hoding a webinar about the research called "Contactless Payments: The Retailer Experience." Upcoming merchant projects include an ROI model and profiles on retailers accepting contactless payments.
And the council's Consumer Work Group recently completed consumer research on attitudes toward contactless and mobile payments. The Security Work Group plans to publish the white paper, "What Makes a Smart Card Secure?" in early fall.
"The council's priority is to provide contactless and mobile payment educational resources that will be most beneficial to the industry," said newly elected chair Deborah Baxley of IBM. "To this end, our work last year has been invaluable in giving us an understanding of what resources stakeholders need in order to make educated decisions regarding the technologies, and will shape our projects for the coming year."
The Contactless and Mobile Payments Council comprimses more than 120 individuals from 48 organizations, including card issuers, payment brands, merchants, financial-payment processors, terminal vendors, card manufacturers, chip vendors, systems integrators/consultants and personalization bureaus.
