NXP, Gemalto and Ingenico are the three highest ranked vendors to sit atop ABI Research’s latest payment and banking card and contactless technologies Competitive Assessment.

The Competitive Assessment comprised a total of 18 companies, all evaluated against 11 different criteria under the categories of implementation and innovation, in addition to a market share analysis for the same 18 companies.

• Gemalto’s contactless readiness and NFC developments proved a winning point within the innovation category. Not only is it active in contactless and NFC, it has participated in over 45 NFC trials to date and has a range of contactless payment cards already deploying within Brazil, Poland and the UK.

• For NXP, its dominance within the transportation and ticketing, and access control markets give it the edge over its competitors when it comes to market convergence. The ability to leverage an existing large-scale client base for additional NFC emulation gives NXP added value and the potential to be a major beneficiary of NFC driven market convergence.

• Ingenico’s high innovation score was primarily driven by a broad contactless availability, a robust mobile POS solution targeted at higher-end clients, along with established strategic partnerships with all the major payment networks including PayPal, a potential payment network disrupter.

Collectively the three vendors achieved well above average scores also within the implementation category measuring global presence, breadth of services, partnership strengths, influence, and standards (EMV and PCI) compliance.