With Apple having decided to give a miss to the near field communication (NFC) technology in its newly-unveiled sixth-generation iPhone – the iPhone 5 – which is scheduled to hit the markets on September 21, a number of mobile payment experts are of the opinion that Apple’s ‘no NFC’ decision for iPhone 5 might not be regrettable, at least in the near future, because of the slow rollout of the technology.

While NFC backers will apparently be disappointed at the technology having been left out of the new iPhone, Aite Group analyst Rick Oglesby said that Apple made a good choice in leaving out NFC to deliver its thinnest- and lightest-ever iPhone because, with barely 2 percent of merchants worldwide being equipped with NFC reader terminals, the technology seemingly was not worth much attention from Apple.

Moreover, since NFC payment systems communicate with NFC chips on the smartphones via special software or special payment terminals, some merchants have cringed away from the adoption of those technologies to facilitate mobile payments.

As such, rather than including NFC technology in iPhone 5, Apple decided to endorse its Passbook mobile payment software which runs on the iOS 6 mobile operating system of the handset, and transmits payment details through bar codes on the smartphones’s 4-inch screen.

Elaborating the reason behind Apple’s decision to go in for Passbook software instead of including NFC, Apple’s SVP Phil Schiller told AllThingsD that the passbook software is capable of doing “the kinds of things customers need today.”