NFC

Near Field Communications (or NFC for short) is to be used in one of the most promising future payment systems in the US, Isis. Japan has integrated something similar to this quite a while ago with their Mobile Felica wireless payment system, and all of the new phones support it, giving them the possibility to pay for groceries, electronics, and train tickets with nothing more than a swipe of their phone over the receiving sensor. NFC is also the perfect solution for the virtual business card problem. A lot of companies and developers have tried solving it with universal software and other add-ons, but failed. With an NFC chip in every phone, everyone gets the ability to send any data to anyone else s phone.

NFC is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology that enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 cm distance.

NFC is an upgrade of the existing proximity card standard (RFID) that combines the interface of a smartcard and a reader into a single device. It allows users to seamlessly share content between digital devices, pay bills wirelessly or even use their cellphone as an electronic traveling ticket on existing contactless infrastructure already in use for public transportation.

The significant advantage of NFC over Bluetooth is the shorter set-up time. Instead of performing manual configurations to identify Bluetooth devices, the connection between two NFC devices is established at once (under a 1/10 second).

Due to its shorter range, NFC provides a higher degree of security than Bluetooth and makes NFC suitable for crowded areas where correlating a signal with its transmitting physical device (and by extension, its user) might otherwise prove impossible.

NFC can also work when one of the devices is not powered by a battery (e.g. on a phone that may be turned off, a contactless smart credit card, etc.).

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