Music festivals have come quite a long way from Woodstock since the 1960s.

And that is not just geographically towards places like London’s Hyde Park but the technology itself.

From near field communication (NFC) to cashless payments, Lara Lewington looks at some of the technology that a festival now relies on to rock.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9741082.stm

Thank you for your comments.

In response to the points you have raised.
1. Yes I am aware that NFC has also been around for 10 years, regardless it is set to be the industry standard. Of course there are technologies out there busing far more intelligent and secure technology. The point was more related to the fact EMV has been implemented for over 6 years…and the US declined to switch over when Europe did, so why now?
2. Of course there is a good reason for people to pay with their phones!! It is quicker, easier, you always have your phone with you, you just need the one phone instead of lots of cards. I am sure you are well aware of the arguments on this side. I, for one, definitely want to pay with my phone.
3. I am well aware of the cost of the upgrades for the merchants. Even with Visa and MasterCard incentivizing with reduced PCI costs merchants will loose out, the point I was making was purely related to the benefits for wallet providers/NFC/mobile payments.

Yes, acronyms and abbreviations can be very tricky. As a rule of thumb it’s best to avoid them if you think there’s a chance your reader won’t understand you mean. When I am writing I usually spell out the phrase followed by the abbreviation / acronym in brackets, e.g. Customer Relationship Management (CRM). If you then subsequently refer to the abbreviated form, the reader can refer back to the “explanation”.

Of course, in business and public life in general, short forms are often deployed as a sort of code so that if you don’t belong to the profession / industry you can’t follow the argument. (This is true of jargon generally.)

Btw (by the way!) the British Prime Minister David Cameron made the same mistake in his texts to Rebekah Brooks (the former editor of the British tabloid newspaper The Sun). He also assumed that LOL meant “lots of love”: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/11/rebekah-brooks-david-cameron-texts-lol

Robert

You can join the Milan Business English Network on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3377577&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Robert

One is your inference that NFC is new– it has been around for more than 10 years as well. MasterCard began PayPass trials in 2002. So if EMV is, as you put it, “…well past its sell-by date..”, what does that say about NFC?

The second, more critical, is your assumption that there is, today, a good reason for most consumers to pay with their phone (vs. plastic). Given the complexity of today’s NFC world, and the lack of complaints about problems paying with plastic cards, where is that reason?

Finally, merchants. You mention in passing that merchants are being compelled to upgrade their hardware by V/MC, but that is not something merchant are happy about. They need to have a carrot rather than a stick, but too much of payments community don’t think about providing merchants a reason to want to accept contactless payments.