NEW ORLEANS – A Visa executive at the International CTIA Wireless 2012 conference said that there is no doubt that in the near future digital wallet services will fundamentally transform commerce and change the way consumers pay for goods and services.

Shippensburg University is letting students order meals via an NFC-enabled sticker at two cafeterias in the school.

Marseille Tourist Office & Convention Bureau is letting visitors pay for public transportation, as well as access museums and city attractions through an NFC-enabled city pass.

There has been a flurry of news related to mobile payments of late but two very important stakeholders have been mostly absent from the announcement: retailers and handset manufacturers.

While much of the focus on near field communications has been on mobile payment applications, merchants and marketers are expected to begin trialing NFC for a broader array of marketing purposes this year, according to a new report from Forrester Research.

The number of mobile users expected to use a near field communications-enabled mobile phones as a metro rail or bus ticket is expected to grow from less than 1 percent today to 13 percent by 2016, according to a new report from Juniper Research.

Following a flurry of announcements around NFC-enabled mobile payments last year from Google and Isis, there has been very little news on the NFC front so far this year while cloud-based payments such as is offered by PayPal appear to be picking up some steam.

Imagine a world in which all you need before heading out the door to shop, grab a bite or catch a movie is your smartphone. That is right: no wallet, credit cards or cash required.

PayPal is testing an NFC mobile payments application at two stores in Sweden while it continues to look at other ways to provide access to its payments services.

NEW YORK – A Forrester executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall conference said NFC-enabled devices will be critical for consumers to get used to the idea of having a whole new way of paying for products – even though they did not ask for it.