MasterCard and 7-Eleven Launch NFC Trial

To get previous NFC technology trials up and running, project architects configured the payment accounts on behalf of the testers. While this approach made the pilots easy to deploy, it is not one that could scale to a mainstream deployment with thousands or millions of participants.

In a report released last spring (see NFC Is Appealing But Lacks Infrastructure), market-research firm ABI Research pointed to the lack of a streamlined approach to NFC phone-payment initiation as one of the hurdles to wide NFC adoption. In that report, ABI also suggested that support from mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), which resell wireless services using the network of a mobile-phone operator, could help spur wider deployment of NFC-enabled phones.

MasterCard is working with 7-Eleven to gather the 500 pilot participants it seeks, all of whom will be users of Speak Out, 7-Eleven's prepaid cell-phone service. Speak Out is an MVNO that is managed, on behalf of 7-Eleven, by Ztar, a Dallas-based mobile virtual network enabler that also administers other similar branded prepaid cell-phone services.

Despite the success of the first NFC trials, such as one conducted in Atlanta last year (see NFC Scores High at Atlanta Arena), the wireless telecommunications industry has yet to throw its weight behind NFC en masse. If the results of the six-month Speak Out trial are positive, mobile-phone operators may spark the demand for NFC-enabled phones that will put them into the hands of millions of U.S. consumers, according to a new report ABI Research issued last week.

"If a mobile operator puts NFC capabilities into the specifications for handsets it wants to buy, then there will be more than enough handset manufacturers to fulfill those orders. But if the operators don't want to buy NFC-enabled phones, those phones won't get into the hands of the public," says Jonathon Collins, senior analyst with ABI Research.

In addition to making sure NFC phones are easy for consumers to configure and utilize, some mobile operators are also waiting for NFC-enabled handsets utilizing the CDMA network to hit the market. At present, only prototypes of such phones exist. Speak Out's network uses GSM technology, but half of major U.S. mobile-phone operators use CDMA. It's a chicken-and-egg scenario, with handset manufacturers looking for demand from CDMA mobile-phone operators to increase before they'll introduce NFC-enabled CDMA phones to the market.