I think we need to grapple with the fact that NFC offers many advantages to consumers and card issuers when smartphone adoption (potentially with NFC capabilities) enables consumers to leapfrog the NFC enabled credit card step, jumping straight to a contactless wallet. Full consumer adoption will take time - there is no way around this. The value of mobile payments is unquestionable, although it doesn't replace traditional payments processes. VeriFone's approach makes sense - offer the myriad of capabilities in one device all of the time and expect to interact with customers in a variety of ways.

Support and collaboration between the issuers, carriers, processors and banks is necessary. The industry expects commitment and expects that progress will not be stalled, because if the traditional payments processes are no longer tenable, merchants and consumers will find another way to do business - PayPal has blazed the way, but iTunes and others may emerge as the transaction processors of the future. Of course, in most cases, credit transactions occur behind the scenes in each of these cases, but will they always have to?