NFC to Fuel a Rise in Mobile Payments

A wider availability of smartphones combined with more contactless acceptance at merchant locations should generate some $71 billion in near field communication mobile payments worldwide by 2015, research suggests.

The research firm Informa UK Ltd. predicts total shipments of NFC-enabled handsets to reach 630 million, up from some 44 million available in 2011.

"We expect a modest growth of the mobile NFC market for the next two years, but this will change as many of the leading players introduce NFC-enabled handsets, spurred to enter the market by fear of Apple's and Google's ambitions in the sector," Guillermo Ecofet, Informa senior analyst, said in a press release.

Informa expects Google Andriod-powered smartphones to account for the largest number of NFC handset shipments.

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