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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

BARCELONA – Apple is unlikely to jump into the mobile payments market at the physical point of sale, as PayPal is doing–there’s not enough profit in it for Apple, contends the head of the PayPal Mobile unit.

Telco-backed online mobile-payments company Boku is seeking to expand to the physical point of sale using NFC phones, contactless stickers and conventional prepaid cards and is partnering w

PayPal has announced the release of the app supporting its previously announced NFC-based peer-to-peer service, which enables two users with NFC-enabled Android smartphones to tap to initiate a money transfer.

PayPal gave a preview of what it sees as the “future of shopping” and noticeably absent in that sneak peek was NFC technology.

It will be three or four years before NFC-based payment becomes commonplace in smartphones—but those players that want to take advantage of the trend had better start partnering today.

PayPal today unveiled its first NFC-based service, demonstrating peer-to-peer payments facilitated by users tapping their Google Nexus S NFC phones together.

Online payment company PayPal wasted little time in giving its review of the new Google Wallet, filing suit against the two Google executives who led the unveiling of the NFC wallet yesterday–accusing the executives of stealing PayPal's trade secrets.

Smartphones that can be waved in front of a merchant terminal to buy everything from groceries to gas aren’t widely available yet, but that’s not stopping phone companies, credit card giants, banks, loyalty programs and even Google from fighting for a piece of the action. (Money-Canada)

About 25% to 30% of merchant locations in the United States will need to be covered by contactless terminals if service providers and mobile operators hope to get consumers interested in tapping their NFC phones for retail transactions, says POS terminal vendor VeriFone.

Payments industry veteran Patrick Gauthier has begun work this month as head of market intelligence at PayPal, while ex-MasterCard Worldwide innovation chief Joshua Peirez–who sources said had been up for the job as CEO of the U.S. mobile carrier joint venture–moves to Dun & Bradstreet.