I think Apple is playing it perfectly.

Passbook is allowing Apple and retailers to lay down the appropriate processes and infrastructure to support a full-blown wallet strategy. Passbook is a barcode approach-or QR [Quick Response] code-driven approach-and so adoption is going to much more rampant.

Apple is waiting, too. If there was huge NFC adoption, and [NFC] readers were going in at all major retail locations, then Apple's strategy may shift to support it. But that's not happening. So Apple is going with the lowest common denominator approach, which is the barcode.

If and when Apple does come up with an NFC chip, I think that the development community will get some hints so that they could start developing in advance.

(There's more to NFC than mobile payments, writes CIO.com Senior Editor Al Sacco. Check out his .)