We all know that NFC is a reality functioning in Asia and it took about five years to rollout and with full commitment from the largest carrier to make it happen. The credit card cartel (VISA & MC) and some of the banks were not too keen in participate and yet the carrier’s muscle made it happen.

Let’s also take into consideration the fact that there are 800,000 contactless terminals deployed in the US and growing everyday. Next time you are in Wal-Mart, target or 7–11, notice the contactless POS terminals installed. There is also a number floating around that NCR, one the largest register retail system manufacturers, has almost 90% of its registers NFC ready.

So the missing link is actually Is actually a handset to make this work.

The notion that POS terminals that are today connected to a “GLOBAL” financial network that is secure and moves billions of dollars every day is going to disappear is just naïve.

Some of the companies on this panel including PayPal depend on that network and cannot as of today or in the near future unplug from it.