iKaaz, a Bangalore-based mobile payments solution provider, founded by ex-Nokia Money team, has launched a Tap & Pay reader that works on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to enable cashless transactions. Interestingly, with iKaaz' technology both, merchants and consumers, need not have NFC enabled devices. Note that only couple of high end smartphone come with the NFC technology, and India is majorly a feature phone market. iKaaz has tried to bypass the requirement of NFC technology on consumer's or merchant's device. Instead of requiring users to have an NFC capable phone, it provides consumers with NFC stickers to make their phone NFC enabled. These NFC Stickers are priced between Rs 40 and Rs 70, depending on the model. iKaaz has informed MediaNama that these stickers come in the form of college or corporate id cards, which are available for Rs 40. If the card needs to be inserted inside a mobile phone, then it's priced at Rs 70. The NFC stickers can then connected to Mobile Wallet for payment. The iKaaz NFC Reader can be connected to any mobile phone to convert it into a mobile Point Of Sale (POS) device. The device is available for Rs 1000. In October 2012, iKaaz had launched its NFC based Tap & Pay solution for merchants. It appears that the company may have realized that NFC did not quite take off in the country as feature phone handsets still do not come with NFC capability. Concerns NFC technology did not take off in the country is due to the high cost…
