Sometimes it seems like the opposite is true, but technological advancement generally makes things more convenient. We can comfortably attribute an improvement in the quality of our lives to futuristic features like Hold For Me, Magic Eraser, and contactless payments, among other things. The latter is enabled by the underlying NFC technology baked into the best Android smartphones. This tech has improved since its introduction, but the standard’s governing body has big plans for the next five years.
The NFC Forum was established in collaboration with titans of the tech industry back in 2004, to help coordinate and streamline efforts to improve Near Field Communications. Today, the tech enables various smart home automations and is behind Google Wallet and Samsung Pay’s Tap to Pay systems. The Forum recently revealed its tech roadmap through 2028 outlining five key areas of planned research and development.
The forum members collectively agree wireless power transmission over NFC needs to be upped from the current one watt limit. Increasing it to three watts should be adequate to power small wireless devices and even create new applications previously left unexplored due to power constraints. The forum also plans a four- to six-fold increase in the wireless data transmission range over NFC. The current limit is 5mm, so we ironically bring our devices in contact with the point of sale (POS) devices for contactless payments to go through. If the maximum distance goes up to 20 or 30mm, antenna alignment issues can be reduced, and contactless payments can live up to their name.
Besides these improvements, the NFC Forum hopes to make the standard capable of multipurpose taps, where a single interaction with an NFC antenna serves as a trigger for multiple actions. This can be particularly useful in home automation systems, IoT applications, warehousing, and total-journey ticketing. Lastly, the NFC chips in devices should be capable of sharing how products should be recycled, helping the circular economy become more healthy and sustainable.
The NFC Forum developed this roadmap collaboratively with representatives from Forum members, including Google, Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, Sony, Huawei, Identiv, NXP, Infineon, and STMicroelectronics. The Forum has shared the roadmap publicly to drive awareness and highlight the significance of its efforts as opposed to circulating the roadmap only among Forum members.
Since the planned improvements can benefit contactless payment tech and small wireless devices alike, we certainly have interesting NFC applications to look forward to. However, these developments will likely take a few years to show up in mass-market devices.
