New ways to pay [Communications Near Field]

The way consumers pay for goods has evolved for years, and contactless payment is the just the latest in convenience, but will it ever gain full acceptance? Contactless payment, also dubbed wave and pay´ or ´tap and go´, offers consumers a different method of paying for lower-valued goods, at £20 and under. Ironically though, `contactless´ does not always mean contactless. Transactions require close and sometimes physical contact using a contactless-enabled card or near-field communication (NFC) smartphone over a contactless reader. Credit card companies have issued their own contactless offerings, such as PayPass (Mastercard) and PayWave (Visa), while Barclaycard has taken things a step further and released PayTag - an NFC-equipped sticker that can turn any mobile phone into a contactless payment device. Mobile phone vendors such as HTC, Samsung, Google and LG have manufactured NFC-enabled handsets as an alternative method of payment. Though Apple´s involvement in contactless payment has so far been non-existent, it is rumoured that the US Patent and Trademark Office has issued the company a patent for a system that uses NFC for its speculated `iWallet´, a feature reportedly planned for the iPhone 5S.