The mobile payment alliances announced this summer – such as that between Square and Starbucks as well as the one involving PayPal and Discover – will not stop or delay NFC deployments, according to Olivier Piou, Gemalto’s chief executive. Responding to an analyst question during the company’s first-half results call, Piou said NFC was already established: “You have all sorts of noise as usual but the NFC battle is won de facto. No one disputes NFC's deployments. A year or two ago we could have argued about this but now the question is who will win?”

Piou pointed as proof of his argument to the contracts won by Gemalto for its trusted service manager (TSM), which serves a potential market of 800 million users (although during the results announcement he acknowledged “only a few million” of this figure were currently activated as NFC-based users).

Referring in particular to Square, he said it is “not a competitor, it could even be a client like any issuer”. Like any start-up he said Square’s strategy is to grow “as fast as possible in the easy places and make as much noise as it can”.

In its results, Gemalto forecast it would reach EUR 300 million in operating profits in full-year 2012, a year ahead of schedule. Its mobile communications business makes an important contribution. In the first half of 2012, it reported a six percent growth in revenue to EUR 476 million in its mobile communications unit and an operating profit that grew 14.6 percent to EUR 69 million.

However Piou commented on seasonality in the mobile communications business. A strong second half to 2011, particularly in Q4, will make for “a hard comparison” in 2012, he said.

Overall, Gemalto’s first-half revenues grew by seven percent to EUR 1.02 billion and its first-half operating profits grew by 56 percent to EUR 115 million.