What can NFC be used for?

swy05 said:

Hilarious. You have no clue what you are talking about.

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Are you not capable of reading? Honestly, there's a shocking lack of basic literacy that's really starting to get on my nerves.

There is currently nothing special about NFC that makes it uniquely capable of anything.

NFC is heavily used in Asia.

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RFID is heavily used in Asia alongside QR codes and other information-sharing services. Nothing is NFC-dependent, and most Asian payment systems predate the global Type A and Type B NFC standards for financial transactions, which is hugely problematic for them. Just like Felica is having to be rebuilt for standardized NFC, other infrastructure must likewise adapt before it will even be possible for NFC to become a meaningful part of mainstream technology.

NFC is not the only way to implement RFID readers, and RFID isn't the only way to share information snippets over short distances. The point, which you are at this point willfully ignoring, is that NFC is not currently uniform, mature, and global so as to be a fundamental technology of mobile devices, and the field is changing with sufficient speed so as to make it unwise to declare a winner. It is right now a buzzword more than anything else.

NFC stickers are amazing.

lianlua said:

Are you not capable of reading? Honestly, there's a shocking lack of basic literacy that's really starting to get on my nerves.

There is currently nothing special about NFC that makes it uniquely capable of anything.

RFID is heavily used in Asia alongside QR codes and other information-sharing services. Nothing is NFC-dependent, and most Asian payment systems predate the global Type A and Type B NFC standards for financial transactions, which is hugely problematic for them. Just like Felica is having to be rebuilt for standardized NFC, other infrastructure must likewise adapt before it will even be possible for NFC to become a meaningful part of mainstream technology.

NFC is not the only way to implement RFID readers, and RFID isn't the only way to share information snippets over short distances. The point, which you are at this point willfully ignoring, is that NFC is not currently uniform, mature, and global so as to be a fundamental technology of mobile devices, and the field is changing with sufficient speed so as to make it unwise to declare a winner. It is right now a buzzword more than anything else.

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Do you even have the slightest idea of what you are talking about?

You're saying it's impossible for NFC to become a meaningful part of mainstream technology.

Let me quote you here.

"Just like Felica is having to be rebuilt for standardized NFC, other infrastructure must likewise adapt before it will even be possible for NFC to become a meaningful part of mainstream technology."

"The point, which you are at this point willfully ignoring, is that NFC is not currently uniform, mature, and global so as to be a fundamental technology of mobile devices, and the field is changing with sufficient speed so as to make it unwise to declare a winner. It is right now a buzzword more than anything else."


I live in Korea and all of the public transportation systems here utilize NFC. All of the restaurants/convenience stores/coffee shops, etc. all use NFC. Even the most remote village.

I take the public transportation every single day and sometimes observe how people pay when taking public transportation.

More than half use NFC on their phones to pay the fare.

You keep on hammering the point that NFC is nothing special. No one gives a crap if it's special or not. That's not the point.

The point is that NFC is being used heavily all over the world.

Or you can keep on beating the dead horse about "There is nothing special about NFC."

hyteckit said:

Wouldn't it be more practical and cheaper just to set up profiles?

The only situation I think I might use the NFC to switch profiles is in the car because it seems cool.

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I suppose it is cheaper, but at 6 or 7 quid for a dozen tags it could hardly be described as expensive. It is what it is, and all down to personal preference, if one wants to use NFC as a solution one can, if one wants to try differing solutions on a phone, then that is a different option. It is good to have differing options on one's phone though.

swy05 said:

You're saying it's impossible for NFC to become a meaningful part of mainstream technology.

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I said no such thing. I said it's currently not.

I live in Korea and all of the public transportation systems here utilize NFC. All of the restaurants/convenience stores/coffee shops, etc. all use NFC. Even the most remote village.

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For the umpteenth time, you're talking about RFID, not NFC. It's a branding dance to call everything "NFC" right now even though it's not. The same thing happened with AJAX and HTML5 and so on. Take your pick. None of the services deployed are actually NFC dependent. They're RFID dependent and were created before NFC entered the market.

More than half use NFC on their phones to pay the fare.

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Not currently. They use RFID-based payment services that are in the process of migrating to NFC-compliant standards.

The point is that NFC is being used heavily all over the world.

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It isn't. RFID is being used heavily, and NFC is piggybacking onto it. The big contactless payment systems, including those used in Japan and Korea, are not standardized NFC yet.

The point is that "NFC" is being used as a buzzword for a mishmash of related technologies, not actually being adopted itself much. Much the same way some wireless companies got burned by implementing early draft 802.11n in hardware, that possibility still exists strongly in NFC implementation because although there is agreement in principle to standardize on something like NFC, that process will involve changes to the standards on both sides before it can be a mature and global technology.

Japan and Korea's mobile RFID payment systems are a prime example of the non-use of NFC, because the predominant systems in use are neither Type A nor Type B NFC compliant at the moment.

There are lots of uses for RFID and other similar information-sharing/contactless systems, but right now it is not common for any system to rely on NFC itself because most systems are proprietary or incompatible. It is too soon to tell which system will become the global standard and what will actually be backed with any strong commitment.

In case it is still somehow confusing for you, let's illustrate it. Osaifu Keitai, Japan's mobile payment infrastructure, started taking payments in 2004. The very first NFC mobile phone, a Nokia, didn't show up until late 2006; the first Android NFC phone launched in 2011.

People were using that Felica (RFID) payment system long before they could purchase a phone with NFC. People with NFC phones can use Felica because they added that capability--but if Osaifu Keitai switches over to NFC, all those phones will need to be replaced because they won't be compatible. If the conversion results in upgrades to the NFC standards, even current NFC phones may be incompatible.

NFC is pretty popular here in the US if you look for it as far as payment go.

Please turn off the terrible music before playing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ2pSzpnY_g&feature=youtube_gdata_player

That video is 10 months old so the tech has only gotten more popular.

lianlua said:

No, you're just missing the point.

What's prolific is the use of short-range data exchange tokens, mostly RFID-based. That's all fine and dandy and not going anywhere. But that's got nothing to do with NFC implementation itself. NFC implements an RFID reader that makes all these things possible, but that's not the only way to read RFID information.

The issue is that NFC is problematic and hasn't added much to the RFID landscape. There are security issues, standardization and compatibility issues, and market volume issues. Japan itself is struggling with adapting their Felica mobile payment system to one with global compatibility, for example. NFC kinda screwed them over there.

It's also still a question of volume, even in Japan. There were only about 35 million NFC-enabled phones sold in 2011. Even if half of the worldwide sales were in Japan, that's still less than 15% of their population.

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can you at least admit that passbook is worthless?

it's doing nothing that an app couldnt provide.

NFC offers new potentials.

cynics said:

NFC is pretty popular here in the US if you look for it as far as payment go.

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MasterCard PayPass is also not technically NFC. It is ISO 14443, which is incorporated into NFC devices. NFC phones just emulate the existing PayPass chip so it can be used with existing, non-NFC infrastructure like those POS terminals in the video.

Passbook and NFC shouldn't be compared. I think the reason they are is because many were expecting NFC with the iPhone 5 but it got passbook.

Passbook is just away to organize digital passes. NFC is hardware that can be used for many things from initiating a file transfer, payments, charging settings via NFC tags.

I never actually used passbook because for years I've been annoyed by people using digital boarding passes. The line comes to a crawl when the scanner can't read it 10 times.

Radio said:

can you at least admit that passbook is worthless?

it's doing nothing that an app couldnt provide.

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Passbook is an app, and no one is talking about Passbook in the first place. It has nothing to do with NFC. It is not a replacement for or competitor to NFC.

NFC offers new potentials.

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No, it doesn't. It's a first step at consolidating existing systems. Its only value is if it becomes sufficiently ubiquitous to migrate all those existing systems onto it, which it has not remotely done yet.

There are virtually no NFC-dependent services in current use. There are just lots of services using RFID technology that NFC devices offer emulation for or some degree of backward compatibility with. They're trying hard to brand it all as NFC so that it looks like it's being used. It's all marketing, which is an effort they've undertaken because its adoption to date is far below their original projections.

lianlua said:

Passbook is an app, and no one is talking about Passbook in the first place. It has nothing to do with NFC. It is not a replacement for or competitor to NFC.

No, it doesn't. It's a first step at consolidating existing systems. Its only value is if it becomes sufficiently ubiquitous to migrate all those existing systems onto it, which it has not remotely done yet.

There are virtually no NFC-dependent services in current use. There are just lots of services using RFID technology that NFC devices offer emulation for or some degree of backward compatibility with. They're trying hard to brand it all as NFC so that it looks like it's being used. It's all marketing, which is an effort they've undertaken because its adoption to date is far below their original projections.

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There will likely never be NFC dependent services, at least when it comes to purchasing things. Merchants will offer as many ways to purchase their items as financially possible.

I have an iPhone so it's impossible for me to say but personally I think it looks very useful. MUCH better the digging through my wallet to grab a credit card.

In my daily travels today I went to 7-11, CVS and McDonalds. I could have used an NFC enable device at all of them.

Some people will never use it so it will never be the only method of payment. My grandmother only pays with cash and never uses an ATM, she'll never get with the times there no fault in that though.

cynics said:

There will likely never be NFC dependent services, at least when it comes to purchasing things. Merchants will offer as many ways to purchase their items as financially possible.

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That's not the issue and not what I mean by NFC-dependent service.

There is currently no contactless payment system that requires NFC. That little POS terminal at the grocery store? Not NFC. It's ISO 14443. Your NFC phone pretends to be an ISO 14443 smart card so it can communicate with that POS terminal. In Japan? Your phone has to pretend to be a Felica smart card. In Korea? Your phone emulates their system. None of those is actually using NFC itself. Right now, payment systems are based on something other than NFC. None of them actually requires NFC compatibility to operate. It's the other way around--an NFC device must include compatibility for the existing system.

However, if anyone ever implements a major NFC payment network, there will be NFC-dependent services. That's the whole point of the plan. NFC hardware includes emulation support or backwards compatibility for as many existing systems as possible so that one day, all of the current systems might be replaced by NFC. But that process is still in its earliest stages. It's nowhere near mature or stable.

In my daily travels today I went to 7-11, CVS and McDonalds. I could have used an NFC enable device at all of them.

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You're still not grasping the fundamentals here. Not one of those payment terminals uses NFC; it uses a different, preexisting RFID system. Your NFC-enabled phone emulates other RFID services, and those are what you're using.

An NFC phone, in order to work with whatever you encounter in life, has to pretend to be something other than NFC, because there's almost nothing out there that has implemented NFC yet.

Some people will never use it so it will never be the only method of payment.

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Nobody is saying it would, could, or should be.

(double post).

lianlua said:

That's not the issue and not what I mean by NFC-dependent service.

There is currently no contactless payment system that requires NFC. That little POS terminal at the grocery store? Not NFC. It's ISO 14443. Your NFC phone pretends to be an ISO 14443 smart card so it can communicate with that POS terminal. In Japan? Your phone has to pretend to be a Felica smart card. In Korea? Your phone emulates their system. None of those is actually using NFC itself. Right now, payment systems are based on something other than NFC. None of them actually requires NFC compatibility to operate. It's the other way around--an NFC device must include compatibility for the existing system.

However, if anyone ever implements a major NFC payment network, there will be NFC-dependent services. That's the whole point of the plan. NFC hardware includes emulation support or backwards compatibility for as many existing systems as possible so that one day, all of the current systems might be replaced by NFC. But that process is still in its earliest stages. It's nowhere near mature or stable.

You're still not grasping the fundamentals here. Not one of those payment terminals uses NFC; it uses a different, preexisting RFID system. Your NFC-enabled phone emulates other RFID services, and those are what you're using.

An NFC phone, in order to work with whatever you encounter in life, has to pretend to be something other than NFC, because there's almost nothing out there that has implemented NFC yet.

Nobody is saying it would, could, or should be.

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Firstly, I don't have an NFC phone. Like I said I have an iPhone. But let me ask....

What does "true" NFC do better then these "POS" terminals that use a different RFID?

What is the problem with a phone that can emulate these other frequencies?

There is literally no easier way to purchase items that I can think of on site then "faux" NFC. I don't see how a terminal that does exactly the same thing is labeled a POS because of some irrelevant string of numbers that no one knows about or is concerned with.

Edit : Unless you are saying there is a good benefit to the NFC standard itself. But you and I both know if Apple the kings of proprietary ever release a NFC device it will have its own standard.

cynics said:

What does "true" NFC do better then these "POS" terminals that use a different RFID?

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Nothing at all. That's the problem.

What is the problem with a phone that can emulate these other frequencies?

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Nothing.

The issue is with people claiming that NFC is well-established or widely adopted or integral to anything. It's not at all. I'm aware of no ecosystem, payment network, or other commercial endeavor that actually makes specific use of the NFC standard. NFC isn't just a generic term for short-range wireless communication.

RFID contactless payment and information exchange is somewhat common, but it's much too soon to say that the current NFC standard is going to be the one that the whole world standardizes on for the next generation. There are competing RFID-based solutions, Bluetooth LE, and an assortment of other contenders. Even NFC itself is far from finished. It's highly likely that current NFC hardware won't be capable of the fully mature spec (especially considering some of the data security upgrades some industry groups want), and that means that current NFC handsets aren't going to be useful any longer than the non-NFC ones they are trying to replace.

There is literally no easier way to purchase items that I can think of on site then "faux" NFC.

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It's not faux NFC. It's RFID, and it's spiffy. You can do plenty of cool things with RFID tags and smart cards, but you don't need one bit of NFC to make any of it work.

The current tags and payment infrastructure predates the existence of NFC-capable devices. That alone tells you that they're not using NFC-specific features at all. Most of those millions of phones in Japan that can be used for contactless payments aren't actually NFC compatible.

I don't see how a terminal that does exactly the same thing is labeled a POS

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POS = point of sale.

Edit : Unless you are saying there is a good benefit to the NFC standard itself. But you and I both know if Apple the kings of proprietary ever release a NFC device it will have its own standard.

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It doesn't work that way.

lianlua said:

Nothing at all. That's the problem.

Nothing.

The issue is with people claiming that NFC is well-established or widely adopted or integral to anything. It's not at all. I'm aware of no ecosystem, payment network, or other commercial endeavor that actually makes specific use of the NFC standard. NFC isn't just a generic term for short-range wireless communication.

RFID contactless payment and information exchange is somewhat common, but it's much too soon to say that the current NFC standard is going to be the one that the whole world standardizes on for the next generation. There are competing RFID-based solutions, Bluetooth LE, and an assortment of other contenders. Even NFC itself is far from finished. It's highly likely that current NFC hardware won't be capable of the fully mature spec (especially considering some of the data security upgrades some industry groups want), and that means that current NFC handsets aren't going to be useful any longer than the non-NFC ones they are trying to replace.

It's not faux NFC. It's RFID, and it's spiffy. You can do plenty of cool things with RFID tags and smart cards, but you don't need one bit of NFC to make any of it work.

The current tags and payment infrastructure predates the existence of NFC-capable devices. That alone tells you that they're not using NFC-specific features at all. Most of those millions of phones in Japan that can be used for contactless payments aren't actually NFC compatible.

POS = point of sale.

It doesn't work that way.

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Lol, thought you meant something else by POS lol.

I'm just having a hard time grasping what you don't like about it. If current RFID tech in modern phones can use NFC and other non NFC contactless payment systems where is the problem?

You can use what is available today and emulate a future system or the NFC standard.

Is your point about the misuse of the word NFC and its standard? Like people calling HPSA+ = LTE?

I use NFC every single day.

cynics said:

I'm just having a hard time grasping what you don't like about it.

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I don't dislike anything about it.

The problem is with people who don't know what they're talking about claiming that there's some vast NFC infrastructure out there, when there is none at all. It's been barely more than a year since the number of NFC devices crossed the 10 million mark worldwide, and there is still no NFC-based system deployed in the consumer market.

NFC doesn't solve the current incompatibility problems. They've watered down the brand in an effort to make it part of modern life, but in doing so they've lost any real power to encourage contactless providers to switch to NFC. Now it means that the NFC label doesn't actually specify any sort of compatibility or cross-operation--exactly the same thing that happened with the "RFID" label.

If current RFID tech in modern phones can use NFC and other non NFC contactless payment systems where is the problem?

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The problem is that no one has actually replaced an existing system with an NFC system. With the pace that this field is moving, it may never happen, meaning that actual NFC support in a phone will never have provided any benefit whatsoever. Existing systems are likely to skip the current NFC spec altogether, because the adoption has been much slower than originally projected. Even if a future version of NFC is adopted, those spec changes may require new hardware.

In other words, the NFC part of NFC-compatible phones may never be used for anything at all. You can't fault the majority of phones for not including a technology that currently has no use and may not ever become used. In places where RFID systems are more prevalent (e.g., Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong), compatible RFID hardware is present in many phones--but they're not NFC-compliant and actually go to show how little NFC actually changes anything.

NFC hardware also does not fully support all of the existing RFID systems and standards, so rebranding everything as "NFC" without regard to which actual contactless technology is used will inevitably lead to consumer confusion if NFC actually goes mainstream. There will be the endless stream of complaints that they have an NFC phone, but it doesn't work with this, that, or the other.

Is your point about the misuse of the word NFC and its standard? Like people calling HPSA+ = LTE?

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That's part of it, yes.

^^^ I think you are just looking at transaction/mobile payment. There are many other uses of NFC other than mobile payment.

mib1800 said:

^^^ I think you are just looking at transaction/mobile payment. There are many other uses of NFC other than mobile payment.

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Name one. Just one deployed system or service that actually uses NFC and not a preexisting standard. One that works on an NFC-enabled device but doesn't work with an older RFID chip or device.

I've been paying for my starbucks coffee with my iPhone for over a year. Still no NFC.