NFC hasn't taken over yet. Pay with Square offers something pretty close feature-wise, and is establishing residence in the market. Once NFC works well, Square can adopt it and rule.
There is also the chance that Square (and similar geolocation- and photo- based heuristics) will make NFC superfluous. Why NFC when a human-to-human word or gesture is faster, more natural, and just as reliable?
Because eventually they will want to get rid of as many humans as they can in your caffe latte experience. Or more prosaicly so that you can order a snack from a snack machine too.
If automated vending machines are the remaining hope for NFC, that's pretty weak.
A geofenced app -- if not Square, then Apple Passbook or others -- could prompt me on my own device's screen: "The vending machine here requests $1.50 to dispense your Snickers. Press 'pay $1.50' or 'cancel'."
The soft-interface device screen is much more flexible than the NFC-tap/wave-in-the-right-place gesture. Your own device screen will be better for doing things like:
• pre-authorizing a purchase before buying a tank of gas
• requesting an emailed receipt
• offering immediate feedback (or adding a tip)
• avoiding possible confusion/chargebacks about amounts paid.
That could mean 'app-style' payments have not just usability benefits, but also cost and legal benefits over 'NFC-style'.
- GPS reliability/speed degrades quite a bit indoors (are you at Starbucks or the shop next door? What happens when another Mr. Gojomo next door orders coffee and the cashier is rushed and doesn't notice the different face?). WiFi isn't much help here either if you're in a large urban area.
You can still do all you listed starting with a NFC handshake instead of playing with GPS. Geofencing is helpful for getting payments onto existing phones (not to downplay Sq's achievement here), but NFC or another more localized technology will be necessary to make payments more reliable.
