Proxama’s CEO talks to Marketing Week

There’s been much rumour and conversation since last week’s announcement that network operators O2, Everything Everywhere and Vodafone are teaming together to provide a standardised mobile payment platform. Neil Garner, our CEO, spoke to Marketing Week, outlining what needs to be done next if brands and agencies are to grab hold of the many advantages of NFC. And since Sony Ericsson announced that the Xperia Play will be getting NFC soon, the technology is being discussed even more. Not only is it being seen as a payment solution, but also as an enhancement to gaming, socialising, and advertising. Today’s news that MasterCard’s James Anderson (Group Head and Senior Vice President for Mobile Product Development) has been appointed Vice Chairman of the NFC Forum is another exciting development in the world of NFC.

These have been the big stories. But we like to let you know about the latest, less publicised news, as well. So we’ve compiled our top five little-known facts of the last week.

• Visa says the number of contactless cards in the UK will increase from 13 to 20m by 2012
• 36% of smartphone users are willing to exchange chocolate for internet use on their phone (and 79% use smartphones to help with shopping!)
• 81% of users interested in mobile wallets would use theirs to make small purchases
• Proxama are to launch the UK’s first NFC Murder Mystery game at the Norfolk Network event tomorrow (23rd)
• iPhone users are ready for mobile wallet technology (but we’re still waiting on Apple to confirm or deny rumours of NFC in upcoming phones)