Stafford Masie, an IT industry veteran who has headed Google’s office in South Africa, has criticised local banks’ attempts to implement NFC. According to South African website TechCentral, Masie describes trials of the short-range wireless technology conducted by the country’s banks as “farcical” and offering “no value”.  Among the reasons for his scepticism on NFC the entrepreneur points to the risk that handset manufacturers will build proprietary versions of NFC that will not be interoperable with one another. Also ensuring the success of  NFC requires near ubiquitous coverage in locations such as retailers which will be expensive. Masie argues it makes no sense to replace the current payments system that works with a new one.

The former Google exec, who also worked for South African operator Telkom, has a number of interesting observations about who will control mobile payments in the future. He lacks faith in the banking sector to lead a payments revolution. Banks have lost a lot of face in the wake of the global economic crisis, says Masie. He reckons that’s even truer among younger subscribers. On mobile operators he has a standard line about them becoming channels for delivering data on behalf of other brands. But mobile operators will embrace this new role. He says “they’ll love being dumb pipes”. The reason is that operators will handle “local wallet clearance (for international players), they’ll manage Reserve Bank engagement, and that will become their new value proposition,” he told TechCentral.