Will Host Card Emulation save NFC?

Coexistence: Host Card Emulation supports the coexistence between the Secure Element issuance model and the HCE CloudSE and in-software approaches. This leaves an open-door to a shift in approaches or (commercial) attitudes towards eSE and USIM SE issuance.

The offline/no-network problem – CloudSE solutions now offer the ability to support a limited number of “offline” transactions using pre-generated hash values to add a limited element of security to transactions.

What is still required? The ability to converge multiple channels into a single “Wallet” application – a merger of loyalty, payment and customer enquiry services (transaction history, open to buy values etc).

What could kill NFC? New alternate solutions – something we haven’t seen yet? There is a lot of faith put into the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or iBeacon technology – whilst this is a good platform for tender steering, e-couponing and loyalty based interactions – maybe even e-receipt fulfillment – it does not lend itself towards payments. For payment orchestration – NFC seems better placed to fulfil this need – as it is inter-operable with pre-existing Contactless functionality already rolled out to existing EFT-POS terminals.

If Apple and Microsoft throw their collective weight behind HCE along with Google (Android) and BlackBerry - we may see it as an evolutionary stepping stone to a truly mobile ecosystem.