NFC (Near Field Communication) future seems to be in dark as Apple decides not to embed its new iPhone 5 or any of other products declared today. All the rumor’s heard so far about NFC to be part of iPhone 5 comes to an end today. Launch of iPhone 5 does not seem to be a good news for mobile payments industry.

Certainly apple feels NFC is not yet ready or secured as one factor authentication. Considering Apple’s new patent of fingerprint biometric plus NFC has something to say about the future Apple products to come. It is also important to remember that Apple has bought Authentec which does signal some level of security research and development to be part of more iPhones to come.

But as Apple iPhone 5 not NFC enabled, so is the case with iPhone 4 & iPhone 4S it is going to be quite difficult to see if NFC based payments via third party providers or even google wallet to pickup. iPhone market share and innovation has fascinated younger and other generations which is going to have them buy iPhone as their next phone even though it does not have NFC.

Features released by Tim Cook today clearly says Apple is not in the race of mobile payments, but certainly rolled out their new Passbook app.

So who is going to define the future on NFC till the next iphone is launched by Apple ?

Is it Google ? with their new phones ? & Google Wallet.

For now future of NFC is in dark, it would be interesting to see how the ROI of so many startup’s using NFC would survive till customers have NFC enabled mobile device. So initially it was thought about as POS need to be upgraded for enabling NFC based mobile payments but now it is the consumer problem not having NFC phone for iPhone lovers certainly would not be adopting the NFC based payments in near future.

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