Sterling Rice Group

Last week we had the pleasure of meeting with the president of a large financial transaction services firm. He was an incredibly bright guy, with amazing insights on the payment/transaction industry. He came to us with a need for our innovation services. As part of the conversation he gave us some background on where they stand with innovation today. This led to some insights on NFC, and all of the players that are working together to make this happen. As often happens with a shift in technology (like a shift to mobile payments), it takes a few industry leader to get behind things to catalyze the effort. It's widely known that Google is putting a lot of effort behind the mobile payment movement. The one card yet to fall is Apple, and the iPhone. It was somewhat surprising that the iPhone 4S did not include NFC or mobile payment capabilities (SquareUp seized this shortcoming). It will be downright shocking if the iPhone 5 does not include this capability. So all of this is a long way of say this: My one tech prediction for 2012 is that we will see the iPhone 5 released sometime in the second half of the year. Some form of NFC mobile payments will be included, and this will spurn widespread adoption of mobile payments, just in time for the 2012 holiday shopping season. Let's hope the Mayan Harmonic Convergence doesn't happen first.