Whether or not it's used for payments, NFC will be a feature on more and more handsets. This is according to a new report from Berg Insight. The study predicts global sales of handsets featuring NFC will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 48.2 percent and annual shipments will reach 1 billion units by 2017.

The growth in NFC mobile phones, which began in 2011, will be fueled by the fact that nine of the top 10 handset vendors offer NFC-enabled devices.

The number of use cases for NFC will continue to grow over time, the report said, with applications including information exchange, device pairing, access control, electronic ticketing and secure contactless payments.

But don't expect contactless payments, or any one use case, to drive adoption. According to Berg Insight senior analyst André Malm, it will take time for the nuts and bolts of NFC-enabled mobile payments to work themselves out.

"It is the sum of many possible use cases for NFC rather than one single killer application that make the technology compelling for smartphone vendors already today," Malm said. "Once developers gain experience with NFC and get access to a larger installed base of compatible handsets, we can also expect to see entirely new use cases not yet imagined."

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