Yesterday, in an interesting article yesterday for ReadWriteWeb, Mike Melanson wrote about increased industry cooperation in mobile payments:

Bank of America has started working with Visa to begin testing the use of smartphones to make in-store payments without the need for cash or credit cards. The system will make use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which is a short-range communication technology for mobile phones, to make payments as simple as waving your phone at another NFC-enabled device.

Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb reported earlier in the week that:

Apple has just hired Benjamin Vigier, an expert in the field of near-field communications, as its new product manager for mobile commerce, reports NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com, a trade publication for NFC-based products.

A couple of my colleagues at Sun Microsystems had predicted that the iPhone 4 would include NFC capability.  They were premature, but I hope the next iPhone version is NFC enabled, because I really like the idea of mobile payments, and by then, my 3GS iPhone will be due for replacement.  We’ll see …