We can scream and yell about mobile payments all we want, but the technology needs to happen for any sort of mobile payments regime to materialize.

That is a central message of the Federal Reserve, and it is an astute one.

The Fed-initiative Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup makes clear that most of the potential players in mobile payments “are dependent upon a fully secure, two-way NFC paradigm becoming commonplace in the next two to three years,” according to report from the group.

That seems to be a tall order, particularly since no NFC standard is in place today. The Fed seems the NFC capabilities in the Android 2.3 OS and Nokia’s recent announcement that all its smart phones starting in 2011 would come fully NFC-equipped.

But the Fed equally recognizes that it costs $5 to $10 to equip a phone with NFC capabilities. That’s money, and without access to real revenue stream to offset that, mobile device manufacturers are bound to eventually balk at NFC. As the Fed puts it, that cost “must be accounted for in a business case for some member of the mobile payments ecosystem, but that business case does not have to be based on payments functionality alone.” Perhaps, but the cry of “show me the money” will no doubt soon start to be heard from cell phone makers.