A survey by Compass Plus has found that although popularity for the mobile channel continues to grow among payments industry players, support for NFC is in decline.

Since 2011, Compass Plus has surveyed delegates to the CARTES Secure Connexions exhibition in Paris. For its third annual survey, conducted in November, Compass Plus received responses from 70 attendees, including executives from financial institutions, mobile operators and payment processors.

The 2013 survey found that the mobile channel is seen as presenting the biggest opportunity for payments providers and card issuers in 2014, but also as one of the biggest challenges in terms of security.

Although mobile payments did not feature in the top five biggest opportunities in the 2012 survey, more than half of 2013 respondents cited it as the biggest opportunity for card issuers and payments providers. In the 2013 survey, NFC/contactless technology took second place as the largest opportunity, followed by the U.S. migration to EMV.

However, support for NFC/contactless technology as the biggest payments industry opportunity decreased by 50 percent compared to the 2012 survey, Compass Plus said.

A third of the 2013 survey respondents cited card-not-present fraud as the biggest security threat, compared to less than a quarter of 2012 survey respondents. Internet banking hacking and phishing were tied for second in the 2013 survey, with support from 24 percent of survey respondents.

An interesting difference to the 2012 survey was that, after seeing a 7 percent year-on-year rise in 2012, the threat of card skimming saw a 15-percent decrease in 2013.

In 2011, industry expectations for the timings of the mass adoption of both mobile payments and NFC/contactless technology were estimated at between one and three years. In 2013, the predictions are the same, showing initial expectations to be overambitious, Compass Plus said. A third of the 2013 survey respondents still see mass adoption of mobile payments and NFC/contactless technology as more than three years away.

Nottingham, U.K.-based Compass Plus provides retail banking and payments software to financial institutions and processors.

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