NFC stands for Near Field Communication. Although the technology has been around for a while, it’s just starting to gain prominence in the smartphone market. Chances are that if you’ve heard of NFC before now, it was probably in reference to mobile payments. Through services like Google Wallet, you can tap your phone at a checkout in order to pay for goods or services. Here’s how Google Wallet works.
According to Juniper Research one in four mobile owners in the U.S. and Western Europe will be using NFC for mobile payments by 2017 and worldwide transactions will be worth $180 billion. It might prove to be a great technology for mobile payments, and we will likely see support roll out to more places in the coming months, but that is by no means all that NFC can do. Let’s take a look at some of the other possibilities.
Tickets
Paperless ticketing is a great idea and it makes a lot of sense to enable smartphones to act as tickets. There are already various apps that allow you to buy tickets directly through your smartphone and scan your device to confirm at the venue. NFC could make the whole process that little bit smoother. You could buy tickets for the cinema, a concert, or a football game, and just tap your phone when you arrive. Forget about carrying a bus pass or a card for the subway – just tap your phone at an NFC terminal and away you go.
Parking Meters
This is a great example of something that NFC-enabled phones can vastly improve. San Francisco is adopting NFC parking meters which allow people to pay for their parking directly from their smartphone. You can even get an alert on your phone when your metered time is due to run out and you can opt to pay more into the meter from wherever you are. The benefits of this scenario couldn’t be clearer.
Tours or exhibits
Including NFC tags on exhibits or next to paintings in museums or art galleries would allow people to access additional information about whatever it is they’re examining. They could point to a simple web page or be linked up to an audio or video app. This idea would work equally well for tours of all kinds. Additional information via NFC tags could be provided on historical landmarks and points of interest anywhere. The Museum of London is already trying NFC for a variety of things to enhance the visitor experience.
Newspapers, flyers, and brochures
Instead of picking up a physical copy of a newspaper on your daily commute you could use NFC to grab a digital copy for your phone. The same thing would work well for flyers, brochures, and even groceries. It would save time and paper. You could also pick up promotional offers and vouchers to use later.
Networking
Though this will scare some of you, your NFC-enabled smartphone could store all sorts of personal information about you for sharing. This could include a business card, a resume, or just a basic name and address. Exchanging contact information would be a breeze and you could register an interest in a job with a tap of your phone. Companies could have promotional information or a map of the building available in the lobby for visitors.
Restricted entry
No need to carry an access card for work. You could use your phone as a digital key. This could work for hotels as well. As with mobile payments, you could require the user to enter a PIN for an added layer of security.
Tracking medical patients
You might feel strange about having your medical history on your phone, but it could save a lot of time on visits to the doctor or the hospital. Perhaps that’s a step too far, but how about an NFC tracking tag that allows medical staff to plot your journey through the hospital? It could help ensure you receive the correct treatment. It would also speed up the paperwork trail as medical professionals could just scan your tag instead of filling out forms.
Gaming
NFC could be used to create gaming experiences that allow you to interact with the real world. Nokia has been working on some NFC games. To be honest what they’ve come up with so far is pretty dull, but the potential is there to create some fun interactive experiences. If some real game developers take an interest then we could see something special.
Programmable tags
With programmable tags like Samsung’s TecTiles you can really make use of NFC yourself. We’ll be discussing the possibilities of automating your smartphone profiles based on pre-set parameters soon, but imagine being able to tap your phone on an NFC tag (which is essentially a sticker) and autodial a number or send a pre-written text message.
Marketing and replacing QR codes
With QR codes, you can achieve a lot of the same things as you can with NFC tags. Previously, people had to scan a QR code, which involved using an app like Barcode Scanner and using the phone’s camera. With NFC, you can just tap your phone on a poster and trigger an app download, a promotional voucher, or a website address. In terms of marketing, NFC can be used in the same way as QR codes, it just makes things easier.
Wireless accessories
There are plenty of Bluetooth accessories for smartphones. How about using NFC instead? There’s already a foldable smartphone keyboard using NFC. We could see a new wave of NFC-enabled accessories.
Endless potential
The basic capabilities of NFC allow for a wide range of possible uses and the main point is convenience. You can imagine attending a lecture or a pitch and just tapping your phone to download notes and further information when you leave. Checkout lines could be cleared faster, queues for tickets could be a thing of the past, and further information on a host of things could be a tap away.
It all depends on how quickly NFC is adopted and whether companies see the added value in using it. The latest smartphone releases are all offering NFC. If the iPhone 5 adopts NFC as well, then we can expect it to take off a bit faster.
Wireless accessories / Bluetooth
It’s not NFC instead of Bluetooth, it’s NFC as a simpler way of pairing devices on Bluetooth. You can just tap the telephone on a NFC tag on a bluetooth device and pick up all the pairing information, then hand over communication to Bluetooth which has the data transfer rates needed to do anything useful and can operate over the appropriate distance. Using NFC alone would mean you would have to keep the phone and the accessory almost touching (NF=Near Field) and the data rate may be OK for a few characters per second from a keyboard but is totally insufficient for transfer of photos, audio or video.
Security / Privacy
It is always appropriate be vigilant on risk to your privacy and your money and the hacking community to a great job on this, but we still use our cars where we risk much more (30,000+ deaths in US per year, 1.2+ million worldwide). No system is perfect, but as someone working in the smart card since 1991 and in NFC since 2006 I have kept track of all the NFC security attacks / weaknesses / scares and there is nothing there which would persuade me to give up the convienvenience of NFC, and I still use my car too.
Thanks for weighing in Tim, of course you’re right about NFC being used with Bluetooth rather than replacing it for wireless accessories. One odd sounding application I was writing about the other day involved Panasonic and their smart appliances, you can use your Android phone with their app and NFC to program cooking instructions into a steam oven!
I agree the potential convenience of NFC overrides the potential risks.
While privacy is definitely a concern, I’m actually looking forward to a lot of these benefits. The one I’m most excited about it what you labeled as “networking” and the implications NFC will have on the Social / Local / Mobile market, especially with apps that are designed to connect new people.
I’m really looking forward to seeing how developers take advantage of and use NFC technology in that space
How can you have an article about NFC and not once mention privacy?! The only thing mentioned about security is a pin… which, lets face it, are pretty easy to crack.
NFC is scary. Just as, or even more scary than RFID.
Well the article isn’t about privacy, it’s about what you can do with NFC. I understand security is a concern for a lot of people, but I think the risks are exaggerated, anyway that’s a topic for another article.
Although the concept sounds really cool, I would have concerns with security and a phone that has its NFC transceiver enabled. All a hacker would have to do is stand close to you, like a subway, for example, and they could hack your phone, have access to account information even process a transaction.
I think they would have to stand very close to you, but it’s a common concern. I suspect the answer is not to have NFC enabled all the time, but admittedly that reduces the convenience angle a bit. If you read up on the hacks that have been exposed the risk is a bit overstated.
Your phone has to be unlocked for the NFC radio to be on.
Simon, I agree with some of your statements and the fact that some security concerns can be overrated, and Jon, your comment is correct. My concern is that there is a lot of talk about the convenience of NFC, but very little on the security side, aside from the fact that the phone has to be on, that you have to be at the right angle, etc. and even though the technology is not “new” overall, i.e.: smart chips in credit cards, having it tied to an OS that can, and will have security holes, will allow NFC to become another method to hack you digital life. Of course if we were to run around like Chicken Little all the time, we would never get some of the cool tools we have today that I used to get psyched about in Sci-Fi movies and books when I was a kid. Video chatting with someone on the other side of the planet… Really Cool. But it’s still a concern.
Im right there with ya… It kind of reminds me of the mythbusters interview on youtube where they were talking about credit card myths (or something) and the question of RFID’s came up, and why they didn’t do a test on the security of them. Adam went into detail about how every single major credit card company along with their lawyers told them not to. People need to be aware of the risks and not be surprised when their identity gets stolen…