We were reading Gizmodo today and saw their article talking about why Near Field Communications, or NFC, isn’t likely to launch in the US for a while yet. But as we know, the UK’s well on its way…

You can read Gizmodo’s full article here but here’s the part we found most interesting.

“In Japan, paying for things with a wave of a cell phone is old hat. Clothing, food, movies, loose women—you name it, they've bought it using a phone. Americans? Not so much. Here's why. The short answer is "red tape." There are simply far too many entities, players, middlemen and suits that each want a piece of the pie to make such a system practical in the U.S., for now.”

Back in September we announced that our NFC trial, called O2 Wallet, had gone down really well, with nine out of ten people happy using the technology. 78% then went on to say that they’d be interested in paying for things this way. The big winner was being able to pay to get onto the Tube using NFC – 89% of the people on the trial loved having their Oyster card on their mobile.

Here’s what Claire Maslen, our head of NFC, had to say. “Imagine going out for the night and only taking your mobile with you and being able to travel across various modes of transport just using your mobile phone? The trials that O2 has been involved in to support Oyster and other ticketing initiatives, take us closer to achieving this for our customers. NFC gives opportunities for really delivering convenience to our customers.”

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