Near Field Communication and Contactless Technologies - Assignment Example

?Near Field Communication and Contactless Technology in UK By Presented to June 2, Near Field Communication and Contactless Technology in UK Introduction Near field technology mostly known as NFC technology is a first growing technology in United Kingdom and is becoming a preference of financial institutions specifically banks. This technology is expected to become a measure of standard in mobile commerce industry. This paper tends to give a clear analysis of the drawbacks and pros of the adoption of near field communication and other contactless technologies in financial institutions in United Kingdom. This paper involves discussion and analysis of a questionnaire carried out in united kingdom on their view on adoption of near mobile technology by the banks and other financial institutions (NFC forum 2011). Some of the companies which are carrying out experiments on the use of near field technology into the mainstream use are: NOKIA, SAMSUNG and GOOGLE. However adoption of this technology has come with several issues in terms of drawbacks, though this technology come several too which will be described in this paper. This paper will discuss the pros and drawbacks of this technology in UK and help banks which are attempting to add value to their core business function through the adoption of this technology. Based on several interviews, this paper provides some recommendations for managers wishing to take full advantage of the business benefits of NFC technology (rose 2012). This technology is ISO-based and tends to build on radio-frequency identification (RFID) communication protocol and also incorporates standards used in other contactless card technology (NFC forum 2011). Contactless payments involves the use of devices that make use radio-frequency identification so as to make secure payments, these include: debit and credit cards, smart cards and key fobs. The RFID chip and antennae enables users to wave the card or fob across the reader when making payments. The use of NFC technology in United Kingdom was started in the year 1997 by Mobil gas stations but financial institutions like banks adopted the technology in 2008 which involves the use of master card. These banks are; Citibank, American Express bank, Barclays bank, HSBC and the royal bank of Scotland group. Barclaycard was the first institution in UK to offer contactless cards in 2008. The use of NFC technology in United Kingdom was initiated by the orange mobile phone firm when it partnered with Barclaycard in 2010. Mobile phone with contactless technology was initiated in United Kingdom in 2011; these phones had master card paypass and visa Paywave, these services were assigned to the embedded secure element and SIM card. The number of these secure phones is increasing in united kingdom though initially they were available in small scale(carton et al. 2012). The Near field communication technology has been incorporated in contactless card standard hence making it possible to use devices which are NFC-enabled instead of credit and debit cards thereby reducing the weight to customers, For instance, there has been a prooval of a number of NFC – enabled smartphones to be used with Paywave, NFC-enabled makes it possible for users to make payments by using their phone devices in the place of credit or debit cards (visa 2012). Procedure A questionnaire containing several questions which focused on the financial industry in UK was designed. These questions were meant to review on the views of bankers and other financial institution managers on the adoption of NFC technology in banking focusing mainly on the limitations and advantages of NFC technology. The research was about contactless technology in UK though a lot of emphasis was put on NFC technology. Thirty people were given the questionnaires and were given a period of two days to fill them. The study ensured none of the questioned could interact with the other since it was carried in different part of United Kingdom. The questions asked are as follows: 1. Is NFC enabled mobile phones widely accepted as a payment method? 2. Does security influence businesses when it comes to the adoption of NFC? 3. What is the role of the media in the adoption of NFC? Is it critical? 4. Comparing NFC and other technologies, does NFC offer an ease of use platform? 5. Would you prefer adopting NFC technology as compared to tradition methods of payment? 6. Are you likely to adopt the Near Frequency Communication and Countless technology regardless of the high costs involved initially? The questions highlighted below were utilized for semi-structured interviews of providers and users of NFC and contactless card technologies. The results of this research are outlined in the following sections. Results The results of the research were tabulated in the table below; Question Yes No 1 18 12 2 24 6 3 15 15 4 16 14 5 20 10 6 27 3 Discussion To examine the adoption of NFC technology the question set in the questionnaire were meant to determine the main drawbacks and advantages of adopting this technology in United Kingdom. During the questioning section, most of the users of this technology complained experiencing major setbacks which included their inability to work for long ranges. Comparing NFC technology and other technologies, most of the users and providers said that NFC and other contactless technologies could only be used for short ranges (Beecham, s. Et al., 2008). The providers compared this technology with the RFID technology and some were willing to oppose Near Field Communication and contactless technologies which embrace the use of Radio Frequency Identification. Most of the subjects especially the users of the above technologies were arguing that they would fully adopt the technology if the security issue was handled well, though they were willing to disregard its adoption simply because of the security and range issues. This is because the NFC technology and other contactless showed that they could not be used over a long range as compared to other technologies which makes use of RFID technology. One interesting observation that came out clearly during the interview period was the issue of security offered by adopting such technologies as most users was the low rate of data transfer when using NFC and contactless technology hence time wastage. Most of the providers complained about the cost of adopting this technology for merchant companies (Busra Ozdenizci et al., 2012). Most of the users and provided agreed on several advantages of this technology such as ease of use and cost efficient for average consumer or customer. The NFC and contactless technologies are easy to use since they involve a click of button and do not require complicated software; this made it cost effective for an average user since it easier to develop and does not require a large number of experts and operators therefore reducing the cost of operation which could eventually be felt by the user. NFC technology is also compatible with the existing RFID structures making it easier for firms which already make use of these RFID structures to adopt this technology hence saving the cost starting from scratch as argued by most of the providers interviewed. The near field technology does not involve a lot of typing hence adoption would minimize on the number of typing errors made during payment in the banks. Contactless cards would make life easier for business as noted by the individuals involved in the research who included both providers and users of the Near Frequency communication and contactless technology. The adoption of Near Frequency Communication and contactless technology would speed up transaction time as indicated by five of the providers and eight of the users involved in the interview. The time spent when making purchases in the purchase joints is reduced significantly with the adoption of contactless and Near Frequency Communication technologies by banks and other financial intuitions, as pointed out several users and providers in the questionnaires. A better and throughput could be provided if the banks would adopt the use of separate cards; where one would be for tap and go and the other would for normal pin and chip transactions incase they adopted the contactless and near field communication technology, This was pointed by most of the users(thirteen out of fifteen) and two of the providers involved in the research Conclusion This research was carried out in two days hence all the personalities involved, both providers and users or consumers of the above technologies had sufficient time to answer the questions asked. Clear examination of the results was done and graphically presented as shown on the appendix section of this paper. From the outcomes of the interview conducted to different service providers and users of this technology, it was clear that adoption of NFC and other contactless technologies in United Kingdom has more advantages than drawbacks hence explaining the recent increase in the number of firms that offer finance services preferring to use contactless and NFC technologies. References Busra Ozdenizci et al., 2012. NFC research framework: a literature review and future research directions. In 14th proceedings of the ibima conference, 23-24 June 2010. Channel 4, 2012. Barclay’s contactless cards users exposed to fraud. Channel 4 news. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agwfryvh_oe. Beecham, s. Et al., 2008. Motivation in software engineering: a systematic literature review. Information and software technology, 50(9-10), pp.860–878. Appendix The following graphs and charts were drawn from the research results Graph 1 below is a bar graph showing the responses given by the providers and users on various questions Read More