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In an interview, David Messenger, American Express’s head of online and mobile, tells me they have identified a major pain point among teens and others who are still using cash and checks to conduct a majority of their transactions.

The conversation got heated when a woman raised her hand to say she didn’t understand why she would ever adopt mobile payments: Seriously, how could a phone be easier than swiping a card?

Walmart’s SVP of online and mobile, Gibu Thomas, explained that the discount retail conglomerate would never pressure users to adopt it, while T-Mobile Chief Strategy Officer Peter Ewens defended the technology by saying that it improved security.

PayPal has shown their new peer-to-peer NFC payment system at MobileBeat 2011 today, using two Android powered Samsung Nexus S phones.  The premise is simple -- open the app on both phones, enter the payment amount on one, and bump them together.  After the buzz, enter account details, and the payment is processed.  Afterwards, the normal email receipts are generated and sent out, just like we did it in the old days.There's no firm date when to expect this, but PayPal says "late this summer".  Another compelling reason for manufacturers to put NFC capabilities in their new models, or just a security concern?  Either way, we'll find out soon enough.  Hit the break to see a demo video.

Because NFC tags are more expensive than barcodes or RFID tags (just under $1 in volume) they will make their way into high-end retail products first: Cars, electronics, consumer appliances.  As more products start to include NFC tags, this will drive the price down even further.  As the price goes down, NFC tags will make their way into products $20 and above (clothing, wine, shoes, Costco-sized purchases). And then there are the phones. With almost 100 million NFC-equipped phones estimated to be shipped just over the next year and more than 1 billion predicted for the next four years, shopping, comparing, and purchasing via NFC-equipped smartphones will become commonplace.

Program doesn't require coupons or NFC chips; discounts appear on Amex statements after a purchase

Computerworld - American Express Thursday announced the national rollout of mobile payment system that pairs its Amex credit card with a user's smartphone-based Foursquare profile to offer discounts for retail purchases. The discounts, initially available from retailers H&M and Sports Authority, are credited to a user's Amex card within three to five days of a purchase, the company said, adding that no coupons, smartphone codes or NFC smartphone chips are needed. Foursquare, a mobile platform that uses GPS technology, currently has more than 10 million subscribers who use the service as a social network to share their location with friends. The joint effort requires that cardholders register with Amex to link their card to their Foursquare profile.

Card.io, which was founded by Mike Mettler and Josh Bleecher, has raised $1 million in seed funding.

Card.io is focused on solving a specific part of the mobile payments business — buying things with a credit card on the phone, whether it’s digital goods, like a song, or physical goods from a site like Amazon.

Rather than having to type in the credit card number, users just hold a credit card up to the phone’s camera, which automatically reads the card information and enters the appropriate data.

Mobile payments have taken off in the last few years, and are now poised to grow from $240 billion this year to $670 billion worldwide in 2015, according to Juniper Research. Fueled in part by the nascent near field communication (NFC) market, which is expected to be worth $50 billion by 2014, the overall mobile payments market is also expected to rise quickly thanks to mobile ticketing, money transfers and purchases of physical goods. Mobile payments are more reliant right now on digital goods purchases, which is expected to double by 2015 and will account for 40 percent of the market. But the faster growth will occur with NFC, which can be used in retail and merchant locations to buy physical items. Juniper said 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months.

Zoosh is a new technology that brings NFC-like payments to any phone with a speaker — i.e. every smartphone on the market.

Using the almost-inaudible 20,000KHz range — which almost every cell phone speaker is capable of — Zoosh technology can then send data to a receiving microphone. The end point can either be a point of sale — a shop, a ticket machine — or it can be another mobile phone. Apparently the technology has been successfully used in noisy environments — and it’s also fairly safe to assume that a technology like Zoosh would be designed to incorporate as much redundancy and error checking as possible.

Narrate, the company behind Zoosh, envisions two main use cases for its ultrasonic payment system. The first is just like Google Wallet: for $30 — a third of the price of NFC hardware — Narrate says that points of sale can be upgraded to accept Zoosh payments.

Currently NFC is seen as one of the most exciting areas in our industry in terms of revenue generation: projections show up to 700 million NFC-enabled mobile phones will be sold by 2013, according to Jupiter Research. At Nokia, however, we would argue that the industry's current focus on secure NFC may be at the expense of realizing the potential of open NFC. As pioneers in NFC technology, and as a founder of the NFC Forum, Nokia believes that open NFC will have a far greater impact on consumer behavior and the NFC ecosystem than secure NFC will. Open NFC has the potential to spur a vast number of business opportunities for developers, retailers, advertisers, electronics manufacturers and others.

NFC tags, which cost only a few cents, offer huge potential for advertisers, retailers and others to reach, reward and stay in touch with their customers. These tags can be promoted at any location, including a phone retail point, a coffee shop, or even at the local supermarket, with immediate and measurable results.

Open NFC will benefit consumers on a much larger scale and get people familiar with using their device for NFC interactions, before secure NFC reaches a high level of penetration. As more and more NFC phones come to the market in 2011 and 2012, open NFC will change the way consumers interact with each other and open up a host of opportunities for developers both large and small.

A 2009 analysis from Juniper Research (News –Alert) of the $110bn NFC opportunity forecasted that one in every six mobile subscribers (about 17 percent) globally will have an NFC enabled device by 2014. Adoption was expected to be highest in the Far East,with use very limited outside of that region.

By 2014,Juniper now predicts that North America will account for just under half of NFC smartphones,followed by Western Europe.

The latest forecast from Juniper Research suggests that at least 20 percent of smartphones will support NFC by 2014,about 300 million phones.