There are a lot of rumors speculating that Apple's much-anticipated iPhone 5 will have NFC (Near Field Communication) technology that would enable mobile payments-something that most companies have been striving to do for the past years.

The rumors about this feature have been growing stronger particularly in Wall Street and Silicon Valley. There are several events that have fueled the fire of these rumors. The first one is during the Macworld expo wherein an unnamed app developer showed a new product that has reading capabilities for NFC. This means that it has the ability to read NFC-capable credit cards in front of an iPhone in order to purchase items through this app. The developers have not confirmed on Apple's part with this app but they hinted that iOS engineers are "so heavy into NFC".

The second event is the statement released by MasterCard about Apple's interest in the integration of NFC Technology in their smartphone models. In an interview done by Fast Company with Ed McLaughlin, the head of MasterCard's emerging payments he said that many handset manufacturers are in the process of making sure that their models are "PayPass ready". When asked about confirmation if Apple is already working on this technology, McLaughlin answered hesitantly stating "Um, there are...like I say, [I don't know of] any handset maker out there. Now, when we have discussions with our partners, and they ask us not to disclose them, we don't."

Many consumers are not yet keen to use mobile payments due to the fact that this technology is still in its development stage. There have been several attempts to utilize mobile payments like Google Wallet which was released last year. Google, Sprint, and Samsung teamed up to release this feature on a number of gadgets but despite these efforts, Verizon Wireless has deactivated the NFC functionality of Samsung Galaxy Nexus in order to prevent the abuse of this technology. In another effort to introduce NFC in the market, AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless, and Visa have teamed up to introduce Isis for NFC-based mobile payments. This collaboration is expected to be available later this year.

If Apple's iPhone 5 will be successful in integrating NFC in their iPhone 5, many companies with vested interest would be able to take part in this technology. These companies include retail terminal makers, retailers, financial institutions, software developers, etc. Apple's influence in the smartphone market would also be a great advantage as many people would be able to take part with this technology and not be limited in test markets. One of the major obstacles that NFC has to face is the deals made by affected companies. So far, no clear contract has been made by affected companies and the integration of NFC with iPhone 5 might be the one to instigate the public integration of this technology to the public.