NFC Device Costs Stifle Retailer Innovation

Earlier this week Daniel Hamermesh posed the question “Why Doesn’t the U.S. Care About Convenience?”

His point was that many European countries make use of wireless credit-card machines in restaurants while here in the U.S. you rarely see these devices, if at all. It’s obvious to me & too everyone else that these wireless credit-card machines are more efficient for the waiters as well as the consumer. For the consumer, these wireless credit-card machines offer a type of security because the credit card never leaves their sight.

My conclusion as to why this technology hasn’t been adopted here in the states is due to the costs of such wireless credit-card machines. Restaurants have already made significant investments in their existing infrastructure & until this method of the waiter running to/from the register to process a customer’s check the restaurants have no real incentive for investing in new machines.

It’s the same story for Near Field Communications (NFC). Retailers already have so much invested in their existing Point of Sale (POS) terminals that purchasing new terminals that would support NFC doesn’t appear to be a viable solution at this time. If we could eliminate retailers from having to purchase new POS terminals I suspect we’d see transactions over NFC (such as mobile payments) take off like wildfire!