The number of users of contactless payment services based on near field communications (NFC) technology will reach around 516 million by 2019, up from 101 million this year. According to Juniper Research, the introduction of Apple Pay, the iPhone maker's own NFC-based mechanism, will stimulate the wider marketplace and help to address the key challenges of contactless awareness and acceptance. At the same time, NFC solutions utilising HCE (Host Card Emulation) are steadily gaining traction within the banking sector. However, both these developments threaten the opportunity within NFC for mobile network operators: according to Juniper Research, more operators are likely to re-evaluate their existing commitments to NFC and possibly withdraw from the space. Report