Business process analysis of NFC-based Services

Several representatives of the NFC industry are expecting a market breakthrough based on recent developments in technology and standardization. Service providers and mobile operators around the world have already started or plan to start their own NFC trial operations to gain experience with the technology. The main obstacle to rapid market proliferation is that key stakeholders have so far failed to work out a business model that would be able to harmonize diverse interests and handle possible conflicts. The current paper introduces the NFC ecosystem and the efforts of the StoLPan consortium to combine the business process approach with their significant technology developments, addressing technical, usability, business and legal issues simultaneously. The technical frameworks will facilitate the deployment of NFC-enabled mobile applications in a dynamic service portfolio regardless of the handset type and the nature of the services required; while the analysis of the business aspects of NFC-based service development and the experiences from the trial services will create a basis to work out effective market penetration strategies for application providers and other stakeholders.