A quantitative evaluation of NFC based contactless payment systems in retail

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology allows for the implementation of novel contactless payment systems in stationary retail. In this paper, we quantitatively analyze the impact of such systems on a retailer\u27s payment costs on the example of real-world data from a Swiss food retailer. Our results indicate that the introduction of contactless payment under current card fee models would in virtually any case significantly increase the payment costs due to the substitution of low cost cash payments for expensive card payments. This increase might be balanced out by a substantial growth in sales, a reduction in operating costs, or a reduction of card transaction fees