• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 1, 2012

The rollout of near field communications (NFC) has been hyped as the key to mobile payments taking off. But agency panelists at OMMA Mobile suggested the industry won't wait for NFC-enabled handsets to hit critical mass for mobile payments to become mainstream. They pointed to the Starbucks mobile app, which people use to make in-store payments, and startups like Square, which recently teamed with Starbucks, as examples of how retailers and tech providers are bypassing NFC to power mobile payments. The lack of NFC in the iPhone 5 also won't help accelerate adoption of the technology.