With the current credit-crunch situation in worldwide financial markets, 2009 will be a challenging year for many different industries, including ours. However, I see contactless payment rollouts to see positive growth in 2009 across all major continents.
The good news is that we already have more than 60 million branded contactless credit and debit cards issued in the U.S., and I expect it to reach the 100 million mark by the third quarter of 2009. That will then represent approximately 25% of branded cards actively used in the U.S.
This will be a major milestone. However, one critical effort that card issuers must accomplish in 2009 is to increase awareness so that many of their contactless cardholders can start tapping to pay instead of continuing to swipe the cards.
Right after the U.S. comes Canada, the next major country that is seeing significant contactless growth in both issuance and acceptance. Canada will benefit from the October 2010 deadline targeted for EMV implementation.
Both Asia Pacific and EMEA regions will continue to see growth in multiple countries, led by Turkey, Korea, Taiwan, the UK, and Australia. In 2009 we will also see contactless start to roll out in Latin America, especially in Brazil and Mexico. ViVOtech has already shipped close to 500,000 contactless readers to 33 countries. We expect to see these numbers grow significantly in 2009. Clearly, contactless is a worldwide phenomenon.
NFC mobile payments and marketing programs will finally move forward from the pilot phases into full commercial deployments by 2010. As part of this effort, we should limited commercial rollouts of NFC in multiple countries in 2009. I clearly see the NFC infrastructure being built in 2009 with full commercial rollouts by 2010.
ViVOtech is engaged in multiple NFC infrastructure-building efforts with its over the air provisioning and mobile marketing software. I also think that hundreds of millions of additional consumers around the world will finally start benefitting from electronic payments, using their prepaid NFC mobiles phones as a payment device. In my view, this is a very possible reality by 2011-2013.
Another important development in 2009 will be the acceptance of branded contactless cards in multiple transit and transportation systems. This trend will not only help contactless deployment but also may help spur the roll-out of NFC phones in 2010 and beyond.
About the AVISIAN Publishing Expert Panel
At the close of each year, AVISIAN Publishing’s editorial team selects a group of key leaders from various sectors of the ID technology market to serve as Expert Panelists. Each individual is asked to share their unique insight into what lies ahead. During the month of December, these panelist’s predictions are published daily at the appropriate title within the AVISIAN suite of ID technology publications: SecureIDNews.com, ContactlessNews.com, CR80News.com, RFIDNews.org, FIPS201.com, NFCNews.com, ThirdFactor.com, and DigitalIDNews.com. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/contactlessnews-4.gif)
