I believe that the next boom in the tech / smartphone industry is going to be payments. All that is needed for it to take off is adoption from a few large, powerful retailers and a NFC chip that is extremely low on power-usage, easily compatible with Android and iOS devices, and the realisation of consumers. Starbucks recently announced a partnership with Square for touch-based payments throughout their stores which seems like a good first step.
So, how to profit from this? You need the technology (patents), the chips (manufacturers), the software and the stores (payment devices). NXP Semicondutors and Broadcom seem well placed on the patent front, especially with Broadcom recently acquiring a few NFC companies.
Eventually I think NFC will need to be embedded into the baseband chip along with Bluetooth and Wifi rather than being a standalone chip and Broadcom has some intellectual property on this and should be able to manufacture soon.
I considered the usual suspects like PayPal and Verifone and both seem "ok", but there needs to be a boom in software and chip technology and I think there is more money to be made by investing in those companies, rather than the big giants who will eventually accept it. Barclays is even starting to get on the bandwagon with their contactless cards (purchases up to £15 / $20) and little stickers you can attach to your phone to send money wireless and instantly.
Anyone else like-minded on NFC? How would you recommend going about investing in it?
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