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U.S.-based Narian Technologies has announced the launch of its first set of NFC applications, targeting a range of merchant categories with services that it says will complement the payment transaction.

Narian CEO Einar Rosenberg, an NFC industry veteran, said the applications enable retailers to launch NFC services with low start-up costs and with only a low percentage of their customers carrying NFC phones. The applications enable customers to place orders, summon store employees for assistance, check product availability and use other interactive services after entering the retail establishment. The Narian backend handles the service requests.

"NFC is not just for payments, and it certainly isn’t just for the Wal-Marts of the world,” said Rosenberg in a statement. “NFC allows consumers to interact directly with retailers, which opens up a world of possibilities, whether you shop at Target or the local corner store.”

He said the applications, which are designed for 16 merchant categories, including restaurants, supermarkets, departments stores, hotels and stadia, will run first on Android NFC phones and later would support all the other major platforms, including the BlackBerry operating system from Research in Motion, Apple’s iOS and Windows Phone from Microsoft.

Update: The applications are mainly targeted at small merchants, which can start the service for $20 per month. They pay 5 cents for each time a customer taps a tag to place an order or summon an employee. But the first taps come out of the $20, so merchants, in effect, get the first 400 taps at no additional charge.

"We have what’s called a flow control system so there is no way an average consumer is going to overuse it,” Rosenberg told NFC Times. "Some retailers might think, ‘wait, 5 cents? What if this guy uses it 500 times in my store? That’s going to cost me a ton of money.' The system doesn’t work that way. It’s designed for efficient use and no over usage, so on average for the general retailer, a consumer will use the system about three times or less." End update.

While not yet in the market, the Narian applications are anticipated since Rosenberg is well-known within the NFC ecosystem in the United States, and he has been developing NFC and mobile technology for several years.

“Narian is an innovator in NFC, one of the visionaries and early implementers in the space,” Damien Balsan, head of NFC business development at Nokia, said in Narian’s press release. Added Felix Marx, CEO of U.S.-based C-SAM, which recently announced it is building a mobile-wallet platform for the Isis joint venture: “In fact, they were the first company to show how groundbreaking NFC can be.”