NFC transactions have increased in popularity, says specialist

Jul 11 2012, 13:26 PM

Near field communication (NFC) transactions have increased in popularity, as they have now leapfrogged contactless payments.

This is the opinion of Clive Kahn, Chief Executive Officer at Cardsave.net, who believes that contactless payments have not become popular because card issuers have been unable to properly educate their customers about them.

Data management is key for both customers and businesses, as consumers will not want to use websites that have a history of carrying out insecure transactions, so information must be protected efficiently.

This is even more vital now that more people are shopping online, causing heavy amounts of sensitive information to be processed every day.

Mr Kahn believes that card issuers have also been very slow at rolling out contactless payments, besides Barclays, which released an advert focussed on the topic.

However, despite the bank's efforts, the expert believes that many people who saw the advert did not really understand what it meant, while retailers perceived the technology to be "obsolete equipment".

On the other hand, Mr Kahn has backed NFC, a method that makes use of a card in order to complete a payment.

"The real benefit from that is I think that can revolutionise the payments experience for both the user and the merchant.

"Because rather than just presenting a pretty dumb piece of plastic, even with a chip to a merchant, you're actually using an increasingly sophisticated piece of equipment that can hold an awful lot of data."

Mr Kahn added that merchants can use the technology to tie-in payments with their marketing efforts or loyalty programmes.

This was recently echoed by Ian Attwood, Director of PerDM, who believes that businesses need to analyse previous purchase data in order to gain a better understanding of their customers.

Mr Attwood noted that companies should use the information to improve their marketing and tailor efforts to customers, which can help them to feel more valued and potentially lead to a higher volume of transactions.