Last post before the summer break.

A mid-year revision of my predictions for 2013 made in December last year:

1. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to be on the rise. Tick, tick, tick. Apple is using it (as part of AirDrop), as does Android (for Android Beam - same link) and Microsoft. Moreover, in a surprise twist, The Tile raised $2.8m on Kickstarter for their BLE tag. Guess what: that tag could be... your ID (one of the top players is looking at it...)
2. Biometrics to go mainstream. Tick, tick - Apple and Samsung.
3. Mobile operators and payments are going nowhere. Tick. Ditto.
4. Smart transit ticketing on the rise. Tick - MultiPass consortium secured pilot agreements with two major UK transit operators, in London and Glasgow (no public data yet). Leeloo Dallas comes to Britain!
5. NFC on iPhone. Not the full tick yet, but I revised that point to "it doesn't matter".

My predictions for the second half of 2013? OK, there we go:

Uber-wallet: bye-bye bulky ugly leather "suitcase", welcome slim, sleek and sexy "iPod for all your cards, coupons and tickets". We already want it, we just don't know what it should look like (some people do...). "Mobile wallet" does not have to mean a "mobile phone"...

Uber-card: Cards are here to stay - they are ubiquitous and convenient. They are not completely safe because of mag stripe (US mainly) and PAN on the card. We are likely to see PAN-less cards as well as mainstream "chameleon" uber-cards (when one card can emulate all the cards in your wallet). It could be a smart powered card, or cloud-based card. Or both... On a related note, we will be using one-time tokens instead of conventional card numbers for e-commerce.

My big question mark: EMV in the USA... It is "sort of" happening, but there are too many parties with conflicting interests and agendas out there - it could still be the case of the last minute change of heart if one of the (viable) alternatives gains sufficient traction. We'll see...