France Finds Successor to Jerry Lewis…

… and his name is Remy de Tonnac, CEO of Inside Contactless, a leading manufacturer of NFC chipsets.  The charming M. de Tonnac gave what was arguably the most humorous presentation at this year’s Mobile Payments World.   He opened his session with some deprecating comments about his Frenchiness (perhaps he recalls the ugly “American Fries” incident in the capitol’s cafeteria) and secondly for underestimating the sophistication of his audience.  The apology was probably appropriate, as he appeared late in the day and even those who knew nothing about NFC in the morning were pretty well indoctrinated by this point.  Nevertheless, he shed light on some things that I doubt even industry veterans were aware of.  For example, did you know that the acronym NFC orginally stood for, “No F***ing Clue?”  He also took a jab, by way of a backhanded compliment, at VISA’s earlier video clip which masqueraded as an informational video but was, in point of fact, a slick commercial.

Among his meatier comments:

• NFC, which is based upon earlier Smart Card technology, is widely used on mobile devices in Japan to pay for gas at the pump.  Comment:  This is an ideal use case for NFC phones, as it is much easier to dig one’s phone out of a pocket while holding a gas nozzle in the other hand than it is to retrieve a credit card from a wallet.  Although, the FCC has already issued a statement that there is no evidence to support the urban legend that cellular phones can have catastrophic results around gas pumps,  it remains to be seen whether the lawyers will allow us to pay for fuel in this fashion.
• Phones equipped with FeliCa chips can store up to six payment cards.  I wonder if this limitation will also apply to the U.S. implementations?  If so, would that be a significant restraint?
• NFC phones are expected to number 450 million worldwide by 2011, up from 50 million now.  Such phones are largely exclusive to Japan today.