With all the buzz about contactless mobile payments, it’s easy to overlook the other things NFC has to offer. Mobile & Apps takes a look at NFC’s top three use cases outside of payments: marketing, shopping, and peer-to-peer data sharing.

NFC marketing strategies enable retailers and advertisers to connect with their customer base on a whole new level. For example, retailers could place NFC tags outside their stores that can be tapped by shoppers to instantly “Like” the store on Facebook.

The same concept can be applied to outdoor advertisements, like this 2011 roll out in Sydney in which customers could tap a Lipton Ice Tea poster to like the product on Facebook and potentially receive coupons, offers and digital content directly to their NFC phone. Such NFC-enabled ad campaigns have seen increasing popularity in the UK, Japan and Australia.

NFC can also be used to redefine the shopping experience in-store, asserts Mobile & Apps. Citing a recent report from Forrester Research, M&A points out that store shelves of the future could be stocked with NFC-tagged items, each containing a wealth of information – e.g. product origin, contents, coupons and offers – for the NFC-equipped consumer.

The information from these tags could even be run through an app on your phone that compares the data with your personal settings. Such an app could alert you if the tapped item contains any ingredients that you have listed as allergens, according to Forrester.

Finally, NFC allows mobile phone users to share content, such as images, videos, music and more, by simply bumping handsets together. This is already a reality on Android 4.0 handsets, such as the Galaxy S III, preloaded with Android Beam. This feature has already been adopted by mobile gaming company Zynga to allow Zynga Poker players to initiate multi-player online games by tapping their phones together.

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