This article originally appeared in the February 25 magazine issue of IoT Insider.
By Mike McCamon, Executive Director of NFC Forum
In June last year, NFC Forum unveiled its Technology Roadmap, outlining our key plans and research efforts, taking us up to 2028. The roadmap is comprised of five key initiatives that will define the future of Near Field Communication (NFC), highlighting the technology’s anticipated product development, market, and business opportunities across the next five years.
Now, more than a year on, we’re in a good position to reflect on each initiative’s progress so far, and how we anticipate the next 12 months will see things develop further.
Increased range
Today, the Certified Compliant range of NFC Forum connections is 5mm, but the Forum is in the process of evaluating ranges that are up to four times the current operating distance. The increase in the NFC Forum specifications for operating range will make the technology more useful and more user friendly, with faster and easier contactless actions.
Payment and transit, along with newer use cases like access control, automotive digital keys, IoT, and sustainability are expected to benefit from increased range. Increasing the range will mean that as two NFC Forum-compliant devices come into close proximity with one another the communication can start earlier and continue longer over a normal tap experience. Also, users should experience usability benefits, as this change will decrease the precision needed for antenna alignments between the two NFC devices. This will make the whole NFC transaction seem both faster and easier.
Increased range is currently in final specifications phase and will be a key focus for NFC Forum over the next several years.
Multi-purpose tap
In June this year, NFC Forum published our first overview of NFC Multi-Purpose Tap and the value the emerging concept will bring to businesses and consumers. The Multi-Purpose Tap concept will support several simultaneous actions with a single tap, bringing unparalleled convenience to multiple NFC use cases. For example, this is expected to revolutionise the contactless user experience across a wide diversity of contactless use cases such as point-to-point receipt delivery, loyalty, identification, and total-journey transit ticketing.
At the recent NFC Forum Member Meeting in Nice, France, Forum members hosted their first face-to-face meeting to discuss, plan, and scope the work needed to bring the Multi-Purpose Tap concept to end consumers. This meeting saw contributions from a variety of product verticals, use case advocates, and geographic market experts. Diverse input will help to ensure Multi-Purpose Tap can be used across a wide range of use cases beyond payment and transit, eventually expanding into emerging NFC markets such as healthcare and automotive.
As one would expect with such far-reaching scope, NFC Forum continues to encourage all stakeholders from across the NFC value chain, such as relying parties, solution providers, and reader terminal manufacturers, to contribute to the standards-setting work of Multi-Purpose Tap and help take it from concept to reality.
Modernising device-to-device communication
Device-to-Device Communication was another key initiative outlined as part of the NFC Forum Roadmap. This refers to the communication between a device acting as a reader – either a dedicated reader or smartphone – and a device acting as a card – either a traditional payment card, smartphone or other device in card emulation. NFC Forum-capable devices can securely transfer encrypted data between devices, and this initiative aims to further extend these capabilities. This will be made possible through interoperability testing to ensure devices work together as they should, and that the device-to-device communication delivers a high-performing user experience in-field.
One of the first use cases expected to benefit from this work is further modernising devices like NFC-enabled smartphones to add Point-of-Sale functionality (SoftPOS). This will enable convenient contactless payments anywhere – both in traditional retail settings and even person-to-person. The NFC Forum Wayfinding Mark System will play a crucial role in guiding consumers where to tap, as they are introduced to Device-to-Device Communication, ensuring they know the correct tapping location.
The market has seen significant steps forward on this capability in recent months, with a variety of players launching peer-to-peer money transfer and contactless payment services, using NFC Forum capable handsets and wearables. Device-to-Device Communication is expected to continue to proliferate in the years to come, moving beyond payments and into other NFC-based use cases.
Expanding NFC’s ability to share data formats needed for sustainability
Our latest Member Meeting took place in Nice in October 2024, and a key part of the three-day program was ‘Simplifying the Digital Product Passport: A Vision NFC Event’. The event brought together industry leaders, innovators, and stakeholders to explore how NFC technology can drive the development, ease of use, and adoption of the digital product passport initiative.
NFC technology is increasingly being discussed as a leading data carrier for the Digital Product Passport (DPP) that will be mandated for most of the products sold in Europe from 2027. This is thanks to its slim design, security capabilities, data storage integrity, multi-purpose functionality and familiarity to users, making NFC well-suited to being a data carrier for relevant industries and use cases. However, standardisation will be key to ensure a stable data-sharing infrastructure and enable widespread deployment of the DPP.
NFC Forum is currently working on an open, interoperable and secure NFC DPP (NDPP) standard, which will enable NFC-enabled product designers to ensure that NFC chips, tags and devices are interoperable and contribute towards the circular economy.
Increased power for NFC wireless charging
There are different approaches to wireless charging. Many will be familiar with the Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi induction charging platform, which delivers up to 15W over a distance of 4cm and is primarily used for larger devices such as smartphones and tablets.
NFC Wireless Charging is a complementary specification which currently offers induction charging at 13.56Mhz, up to 1W. The unique benefit of NFC Wireless Charging is that it works with customised antenna sizes to meet a range of use cases, making it particularly well-suited for small personal and wearable devices such as wireless earbuds, smart watches, digital styluses, and fitness trackers.
These compact devices can use smaller antennas that allow them to benefit from full NFC functionality without impacting the aesthetics of the product, Furthermore, the NFC Forum standard allows devices with an NFC communication interface to utilize wireless charging without the need for a separate charging unit or induction platform.
Work is underway to investigate increasing the capabilities of the current NFC Wireless Charging specification up to 3 watts in the next few years, bringing wireless power and charging to new and smaller form factors, disrupting industrial design while defining new markets.
The power of collaboration
With hundreds of millions of NFC-enabled devices in the market today, the use cases for NFC continue to proliferate. As such, NFC Forum technologies are only set to become even more prevalent in our daily lives. These five key initiatives in our Roadmap have the potential to significantly enhance the way we pay and receive payments, engage with our favourite brands, power our devices, and access sustainable products and services in the next few years.
This would not be possible without collaboration. NFC Forum Committees, Working Groups, and Special Interest Groups are working tirelessly to advance the initiatives mentioned above, with each work item in a varying stage of development – ranging from research to market requirements to draft specifications.
All members are encouraged to participate at every stage and NFC Forum welcomes the industry to join us in our efforts to drive innovation and shape the future of NFC technology.
