Personally, I'm not sure why is there so much focus on using NFC as an alternate payment method. Recently there was a problem with Google Wallet where the PIN number can be cracked. Doesn't give much confidence to payment using smartphones.
Smartphones, even without the NFC chip, is already plagued by battery problems. Just imagine that you have an NFC chip inside your smartphone and you ran out of battery when you're about to pay. I've written more about this in a post here. That was why I thought about using the NFC card for another use. Discount card.
My idea for a discount card using NFC card is quite simple. Just imagine you have a unique identifier that is encoded within your NFC card. The merchant scans the NFC card and checks the national database to get your name and face which will positively ID you. Why the need to check the national database? In the event your NFC card is lost, just report it and another unique identifier will be issued to you and your previous NFC card will be "cancelled". Using that ID, all your loyalty points will be retrieved from the merchants' systems.
Advantage? A single unique identifier (not your NRIC) will be used to identify you for all the merchants. No more holding on to so many discount/VIP/loyalty cards. Just your NFC chip will identify you. Convenient for you and savings for the merchants as there is no more need to create their own card.
Disadvantage? Branding will be diluted for those merchants who use their cards for that purpose. A minor inconvenience for customers as they will need to inform the national database if they lost their NFC card. There must also be a way to register the NFC card to the national database.
Sounds like a hassle for a discount card? Yes it does, which brings me back to my main gripe. I still don't know what's the use of NFC.
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