‘NFC needs a rebrand’

Mobile payments and NFC are in need of a rebrand if they are to scale more effectively, according to Tony Moretta, the top marketer at mobile operator joint venture Weve.

Visa NFC

Speaking yesterday (12 September) at a roundtable event hosted by NFC firm Proxama, Moretta argued that messaging to consumers over mobile payments using NFC was thus far flawed and that businesses from the banking, retail, and telecoms sectors needed to better unify their messaging if NFC is to become a mass market proposition made available to marketers.

“Anything known by a technical acronym is never normally a good sign,” he said. “The brand is key if things are to happen at scale… The conversations we’re having with the banks and other companies are about doing things at an industry-wide level. Can you imagine how powerful it would be if you had 80 per cent of the banks and mobile operators calling it the same name?”

During the same event, Moretta also outlined more details on the joint venture company’s planned mobile loyalty app which will be made a available in beta to retailers by the close of the year.

The app will effectively be an “aggregator app” that will allow users to store their loyalty cards from a variety of retailers. The app will then let retailers send push notifications to their customers.

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