Oft cited by critics as a fundamental issue with merchant adoption of NFC payments is the cost of new equipment to accept the technology at the point of sale. Bangalore, India-based iKaaz, a provider of mobile payment solutions, is hoping to fix that. The company announced its new 'Tap & Pay' reader today that will let merchants to accept NFC payments without requiring them to spend a fortune.

According to iKaaz, its proprietary NFC reader can be plugged into to any mobile phone to convert it into a mobile POS device. The unit costs less than $20.

For consumers, IKaaz offers an NFC sticker they can affix to their phones so that even non-NFC-enabled mobiles can be used to make contactless payments. The stickers cost less than $2.

"IKaaz NFC transactions are highly secure since [NFC] supports multi-factor authentication," said company CEO Soma Sundaram.

The company reported that its payment platform is processing more than 800,000 transactions per month, just three months after launch. 

Read more about contactless/NFC.