5 Things You Soon May Pay For with Your Smartphone

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apple iphoneNear field communication technology for smartphones is poised to transform mobile payments from a popular experiment to the norm. For those who are unfamiliar, near field communications involve the a very short-range signal from an object like a keycard to a nearby reader. Unlike a credit card’s magnetic strip, near-field communication is contactless — just get within a foot or two and you’re ready to do.

Mobile payments via near field communications aren’t the future really; they’re the present. You can already use your Apple iPhone to buy a cup of joe at select Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) locations. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Visa (NYSE: V) began “electronic wallet” testing in August 2010 and may roll out the technology on a large scale soon. Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) is making NFC standard issue in future BlackBerry phones, and Apple patents and Apple rumors have all but confirmed that the iPhone 5 will sport NFC capability.

Unfortunately, other than Starbucks coffee, that NFC technology doesn’t have many merchants who are willing to play ball. So what will consumers be buying with their phones? Here are 5 ideas that smartphone owners could see soon:

Gasoline

Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) has a history of adopting alternative payment methods like the RFID keychain Speedpass—introduced in 1997. So it’s surprising that the fuel giant hasn’t embraced the smartphone revolution and near-field technology. As of now, the company only has an app for finding gas stations in the iPhone App Store. Expect your smartphone to become a Mobil Speedpass soon.

Tolls

Services like E-ZPass in the northeast and FasTrak in California  use proprietary transponders to smooth the process of toll collection. But they aren’t ubiquitous across the country, and drivers often have to register in advance and wait for a transponder to arrive via mail. Setting up receivers and finding a wide enough subscriber base for the services is admittedly a steep challenge. That’s why it would make the most sense for states to adopt a smartphone-based option. As smartphones proliferate, it would continue to ease the toll collection process from state to state. It would also benefit telecoms like AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) in that such an initiative would encourage development of their 4G networks.

Postage

UPS (NYSE: UPS) and FedEx (NYSE: FDX) already have functional apps that allow account holders to purchase and print shipping labels for packages. The United States Postal Service’s app, however, is just a glorified version of its website. Considering that mail volume sent through the USPS has fallen by 20% over the past five years, it couldn’t hurt to open a new potential revenue stream. Sweden and Denmark are both letting its citizens pay for postage via text message, replacing stamps with codes. Mobile payments would help with those Post Office lines to boot.

Parking

Much like tollbooths, many cities have started adopting not just credit card-supported parking meters but payments via phone where you call a number and your smartphone bill reflects your parking charge. When the vast majority of drivers are equipped with a mobile device already and some cities are already using phones for some form of payment, why not just have use the NFC on their chip? What’s more, near field communication could be used for parking garages as well as parking meters on the street.

Kiosk Movie Rentals

Coinstar (NASDAQ: CSTR) and its Redbox products and NCR (NYSE: NCR) DVD kiosks are starting to feel the pressure from Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and the streaming video revolution. There’s no escaping the all-digital future for home video distribution, but kiosk-based DVD and Blu-ray rental services definitely have a few years left to them just because they are cheap and convenient. Redbox’s kiosk-finder app for iPhone and Android is a step in the right direction, but mobile payments would make picking up a picture at the grocery store even easier for would-be customers.

As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2011/03/near-field-communications-payment-nfc-smartphone-iphone-blackberry/.

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