In this paper, we present an assessment of NFC (near field communication) for future mobile payment systems. NFC is expected to become a very trendy technology for mobile services, more specifically for mobile payments. The objective of our paper is to evaluate in a systematic manner the potential of NFC as an upcoming technology for mobile payments. In order to ensure the rigor of our research, we used a formal and structured approach based on multi-actor multi-criteria methods. Our research provides one of the first assessment of NFC and a realistic picture of the current Swiss situation as we involved numerous mobile payment experts. Our findings show that Swiss industry experts are quite enthusiastic about the future of NFC.