iPhone 5 to Come With Mobile Payment; Google to Bombard Android With NFCs

With a built-in NFC chip, Apple has nudged away the rumors heard from UK carriers that suggested Apple will abstain from NFC as it believes that there is no industry standard related to the technology.

A lot of talk can be heard about the potential partnership of PayPal and Apple. At an AIIA event in Sidney, Rod Farmer, co-founder of Mobile Experience, claimed the partnership would offer "the shortest path between two points for a consumer in terms of spending. You don't have to worry about merchant banks [and] you don't have to worry about the network ... there are fewer mouths to feed, there are fewer existing relationships that need to be altered."

PayPal has already extended its NFC support to Google’s Android. Google has already entered into an alliance with MasterCard and Citi for its Google Wallet service.

Currently, NFC support is available only for Nexus S, but the company has announced shipping of 40 to 100 million Android smartphones with NFC this year.

However, the PayPal widgets will be available in Android phones later this September, which is when the iPhone 5 is expected to be released.

"You need that first trigger for [retailers and merchants] to follow,” said Laura Chambers, PayPal’s director of mobile operations. Maybe Apple adopting NFC payments (in collaboration with PayPal) could offer such an impetus and really set the mobile payments trend growing.