Does NFC required for the Banks?

Mobile payments, mobile marketing, mobile trust services, mobile couponing, etc... Several business cases had been accomplished by several banks! SMSs, WAPs, Java Apps, Barcodes had been used and tried at banking sector. Mobile banking, making the financial transactions over mobile was the hottest business at 2007 and several banks had invested millions of dollars for the infrastructure. Today, millions of applications, financial transactions, querries are provisioned over mobile. So, what will be the future like? and what will be the effect of Near Field Technology.

The thing is why millions of transactions are provisioned but not the billions yet? Although mobile is the most penetrated technological device, it's still used for voice and the innovative youth segment also using it for mostly for voice calls or messaging. Value added services increasing, but is it increasing incrementally? Is the mobile internet ready? Lack of broadband data services and NFC services makes the VAS not to take off yet. We're not quiet sure and may be we should not expect so much at the moment.

I say that it's not the time to expect big business for the financial sector at the moment. And the NFC technology is not the only gadged to make the business fly. Several parameters needed to be filled succesfully for success stories. That's why the mobile financial services is not at the top of banking executives priority plans. But I also say that, the banks who invest mobile services in these years with the vision of tomorrow will have the most opportunity to access any phone subscriber any time, anywhere in the world.