One out of two smartphones which will be released in 2016 will be mounted with a near-field communication (NFC) chip, raising expectations that NFC will become the main method of smartphone payment.
According to American market research firm Strategy Analytics on September 15, the share of NFC-enabled smartphones will likely to shoot up to 52.4 percent next year from 28.9 percent last year. The share of such smartphones among those released this year is estimated at 39.8 percent.
Strategy Analytics predicted that the share of NFC smartphones will continue to grow by 4-5 percent per year, reaching 71.8 percent in 2020. NFC refers to the technology that promotes wireless exchange of information between devices.
In Korea, the most widely used payment method using NFC technology is T-Money installed in buses and taxies. In recent days, NFC is increasingly adopted as the smartphone payment technology. Apple Pay, a mobile payment service launched by Apple in October 2014 is also using the technology.a
