NFC technology enabled 4.5 billion rubles, or about $138 million, worth of payments in Russia in the first six months of this year, reported i-Free, a developer and publisher of mobile applications and games, in an exchange with Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
Svetlana Kostochka, the head of i-Free’s innovation marketing department, explained she expects between 15 and 18 billion rubles, or $460-$553 million, worth of payments by the end of 2012.
With the first experiments held in 2010, the Russian NFC market, particularly its payment segment, is still in its infancy. Its growth is restrained by the current lack of devices that support the technology. Nonetheless, i-Free believes the Russian NFC market will double next year, reaching 30-35 billion rubles, or between $920 million and $1 billion, driven by what is predicted from an observable growth in NFC-compatible gadgets.
According to J’Son & Partners analytics, by 2014, 20% of mobile handsets sold in Russia will support NFC. For example, all but two of the most economical of the Sony gadgets made for the Russian market already incorporate NFC modules, said Boris Borenko of Sony Mobile Communications.
The world’s largest payment systems, including Visa and MasterCard, are providing incentives to their Russian partners to adopt NFC through their proprietary payWave and PayPass platforms. Eleven sizable Russian banks already issue plastic cards with an NFC module, MasterCard says, adding that “a few thousand” POS’s supporting NFC technology have been installed at Russian mobile outlets, cafés, malls, gas stations, and transportation systems, predominantly in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
