So Google/Verifone is rolling out NFC terminals in San Francisco and New York City, over the next four months, and current RFID terminals can't accept NFC. They will probably test for like a year in just those two cities to give time for some adoption and adequate testing until they begin to roll out other NFC terminals (that of course is assuming that they even determine that it's a worthwhile expenditure to spend $10-$15 a phone to add an NFC chip in it, on top of replacing current RFID terminals with approximately $200 RFID/NFC terminals.) So now we are talking about probably over 1 year and 4 months before other cities outside of New York City and San Francisco. And probably much longer until it becomes widely available.
Saying all that, how exactly is this a dealbreaker for so many? Hell, I don't even remember the last time I saw someone swipe their RFID-enabled credit card at a terminal. Now I understand that some places in the world like Japan and Korea actually have decently-spread NFC, so if this is actually a mature technology in your country, I'm not talking to you. Me personally, I'll continue spending 5 seconds sliding my credit card threw a terminal and won't worry a bit.
Am I missing something? Can someone please educate me on the greatness of NFC?
The complacency of people kills me. People become complacent with what they have and don't seach for ways to make it better or do it more efficiently. People say we don't need and don't want to even try A because B works just fine, even though B is many times more efficient.
And the worst thing is the chicken and the egg paradox. "It's not wide spread so I don't need it." If you don't ask for it the makers won't see a demand and it will NOT BECOME WIDESPREAD...
I personally was praying for NFC in the next iphone. It was one of my main reasons to upgrade.
I do live in Japan, and I only use cash around once or twice a week. Everything else is credit card or NFC cards. If I could have them both on my phone, have an application on my phone that AUTOMATICALLY tracks my spending so I can more easily manage my finaces with even fewer missed transactions, and have more retailers want to install more terminals because so many people around the world have that system just waiting to be used, what's not to want.
Just an aside, here in Japan, many of the NFC cards were made to work only locally at first, but recently cards have been reworked to work accross the country and across diffrent companies. Different standards have... standardized. Imagine you have a freely reprogrammable chip in your phone that can use different apps to change function. Just stick it in there and you're good...
Please people, instead of just being complacent, try to think of more efficient ways of doing things...
(about security, I cringe when taking out my card, always hoping that no one can see my numbers, even in Japan...)
