GSMA announces initial speakers for NFC & Mobile Money Summit

Rating: Don’t worry, this one is in Milan not Barcelona

As the GSMA quite rightly admits, as a technology NFC (Near Field Communication) has been around for quite some time now. So the GSMA has created a seperate show for NFC – the NFC & Mobile Money Summit. GoMobile News remembers writing about NFC when the MWC was still held in Cannes, not Barcelona. Anyway, all the signs are that NFC is going to follow in Bluetooth’s footsteps and become almost universal cellular handsets. What the GSMA picked up upon is that leading mobile operators, representing over 60 per cent of the global mobile subscribers, have committed NFC technology. That definitely merits a separate event but this time in Milan.The GSMA says that 300 million smartphones will be NFC-enabled by 2014 whilst by that time global NFC m-payment transactions will account for nearly $50 billion worldwide.

The show’s organisers have now confirmed the first batch of keynote speakers.

The list of industry luminaries includes:- Jung Hee Song, a senior evp with KT’s Service Innovation Group; Tomasz Smilowicz, head of globalmobile solutions with CIti; Dr Hoojong Kim, head of global technology research with SK Planet; and Michael Joseph, md with Vodafone’s Mobile Money.

For those new to the NFC or the Mobile Money eco-systems, the show will offer attendees a brace of Accelerator Classes.

The first is on October 23rd 2012 and will focus on emerging markets. The next day the class will place emphasis on the growing maturity of NFC solutions.

To give you a flavour of what the conference and exhibition is about, the list of topics includes: – Exploiting opportunities for Mobile Money in untapped markets; the current state of the NFC market; innovations in m-payments; plus the future of Mobile Money.

Those who love networking at these sorts of events will be glad to know that Visa is sponsoring the Networking Reception for the show.

It will be held on the Tuesday, October 23rd 2012 from 5:30pm to 7pm. Presumably the reception takes place at the Milan conference centre – the Milano Congressi .

More details of this NFC event here .