My colleague Ryan Kim at GigaOM.com posted a good piece this morning examining Verifone’s announcement that it will begin including NFC readers in all of its point-of-sale terminals. That’s a huge boost for NFC, of course, because retailers have understandably been hesitant to invest in costly readers without some evidence of consumer demand. But major hurdles remain before the mobile wallet gains any kind of traction, including the emergence of viable business models; the creation of incentives for users to pull out their phones rather than a credit card; and the unification of an already fragmented market. Those challenges will take considerable time to overcome, which is why it was refreshing this morning to read this skeptical piece from the Wall Street Journal about the prospects for NFC payments.