Near Field Communication for Mobile Payments

Near Field Communication technology has been a very highly anticipated and desired feature for smart phones and other "E-Wallet" devices. The technology is already available in newer model smart phones and is being used mostly for exchanging pictures and documents from one phone to the other by doing nothing more than quickly touching the phones together.
NFC technology has recently been explored for making mobile payments with your smart phone or "E-Wallet" device. If successful it will eliminate the need to ever have to carry a credit card or cash again.
As with any new technology there are issues that need to be resolved before it can catch on like wildfire. A few of those issues are:

• Security

Security is the absolute most important factor when considering a new device or piece of software that is to be used for handling sensitive information. As soon as a new technology is born, almost immediately you will find somebody trying to exploit it for their own gains. We need to be 100% sure that the only people capable of using our bank information to run a charge are people we have authorized to do so.

• Popularity

How are we supposed to use the technology and expect to leave our wallets at home when 9 out of 10 stores that we shop at do not support our new found favorite thing ever? Simply speaking having the technology is not enough, we need to make sure that it is worth taking the potential security risks outlined above for the convenience of making payments on the go.

• Convenience

Is the device really worth having? There are literally hundreds of new inventions every day, most of them you never even hear about because they do not really serve an important enough purpose to care about. Most popular devices do a great job of showing you a huge problem that you never knew you had and then present itself as the solution to that problem. Remember, every dollar saved is a dollar earned.
It has been said that Near Field Communication is the wave of the future. So far it has not really caught on the way that has been expected. The jury is still out on whether or not the technology will actually be the next big thing or a passing fad. You can bet that you have not heard the last of it considering the amount of money that is being spent trying to implement the idea and solve the problems that the technology currently faces.
I for one am not a big fan of using the technology for mobile payments. The easier it is for me to spend money the more money I wind up spending, not to mention an increased exposure to banking and/or identity theft.