Quick, what’s in your wallet right now?
My guess is you have some family pictures, a few credit cards and maybe some old business receipts. If you’re more old fashioned like I am, you might hold a few greenbacks in there as well… just in case.
Why am I asking? Because I predict that within the next five to ten years you won’t need a wallet.
And it’s going to do so with the help from technology juggernauts like Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)and Google (Nasdaq: GOOGL).
If that sounds crazy, consider this. It took a few thousand years to go from coins to paper money and then onto charge cards.
It took 18 years for debit cards to surpass checks.
Four years after that, more than 50% of all transactions were electronic.
This year, nearly two out of every three money transactions (64%) will be made electronically.
While many of those transactions will be online, a large portion will come from something called “near field communication” (NFC) — a new technology that’s getting widespread attention across the globe.
Near field communication is a technology that essentially lets certain smartphones “talk” to cash registers and other point-of-sale terminals using a short-distance radio frequency transmitter.
With NFC, all you have to do at the register is tap the reader with your smartphone and out you go. It’s as simple as that.
With projections that nearly 207 million Americans will own a smartphone by 2017 (up from 121 million in 2012), it’s only a matter of time before this convenient payment method becomes the norm.
StreetAuthority’s small-cap stock expert, Andy Obermueller, has been following this trend for several years. Here’s what he said about NFC when he first told readers about it back in his July 2012 issue of Game-Changing Stocks:It’s not often that the future lands in my in-box.
But it did last week. Google sent me an update on its new Wallet initiative. The Google Wallet is a new way to pay. It uses a special chip in certain smartphones to transmit your credit card information to a reader that more and more point-of-sale terminals are equipped with. There is no physical exchange of the card and thus no chance of the number falling into the wrong hands.
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It’s also going to open up mobile payments to a whole new audience, notably among young people and a portion of the population that doesn’t use banks. That’s because not only is the credit card in Google Wallet available as a prepaid card — no credit required — it is also available on a prepaid smartphone through VirginMobile. This will certainly help push this technology into the mainstream.
The investment possibilities with NFC are endless…
As Andy mentioned, Google is heavily invested in this technology through its Google Wallet software. Mega financial firmsCiti (NYSE: C), Visa (NYSE: V), Mastercard (NYSE: MA) and eventually American Express (NYSE: AXP) will administer the electronic payments that Google Wallet and other payment apps use. Verifone Systems (NYSE: PAY), as its ticker symbol suggests, makes the cash-register readers for the smartphone NFC chips.
Each of these large companies will likely receive healthy new revenue streams out of the deal. All of which makes me confident that they will ensure each other’s — and this technology’s — success in commerce.
But, as Andy told his subscribers two years ago, these companies are not where the largest gains are to be made from this NFC technology…
The winning stock in this space is not likely to be Google. Nor do I think it will be Sprint, which runs the network, and it’s not Citi or MasterCard… Instead, the likely winner is a company most people have never heard of called NXP Semiconductor (Nasdaq: NXPI). It makes the special chips that go in the phone that “talks” to cash registers. The technology is known as near-field communications, and NXP is the leader, with critical existing supplier relationships with all the major phone manufacturers, including Apple.
Technology draws users, and marketing gets results — especially when Google is behind it… I continue to believe that alternative payment technologies are a hot opportunity for aggressive growth investors.
This is a rocket ship you need to book a ticket on. Consider adding shares of NXPI to your portfolio.
That was when shares were trading at around $25 a share.
It turns out Andy was right way before the rest of the crowd caught on. Just look at how NXP shares have taken off since Andy first recommended the company in July 2012:
With NXP now trading around $61 a share, you might think you’ve missed the boat.
Not so. In fact, now may be the time to buy. Right now there’s potentially a huge catalyst for NXP… namely, a big purchase from the largest corporation in the U.S.
Morgan Stanley recently released a report stating that NXP is “well-positioned to participate in Apple’s mobile payment ecosystem.” They add that the deal “could garner $250 million in 2015 sales [for NXP]” if it’s implemented.
If Apple’s iPhone 6 carries NXP chips, it would add nearly 5% to the company’s annual revenues, which would be a nice boost. But if other smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, LG, Blackberry and others jump on the bandwagon — as many do after Apple starts a trend — it could be a game-changer for NXP.
Better still, Andy previously suggested that with its market cap (NXP is currently valued at $15.5 billion), Apple could afford to buy the semiconductor firm outright using only a fraction of its $100 billion-plus cash hoard.
While I can’t promise these things will happen, the possibilities for growth for NFC are endless. And as an old proverb once said “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.”
Good investing,
By Christian Hudspeth
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