According to a roadmap published by the NFC Forum, the future of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology will be truly contactless. Here are all the improvements we can expect.
Over the next two to five years, the NFC should see significant improvementsincluding increased communication range, more powerful wireless charging capabilities, and improved functionality for online payment services.
As a reminder, NFC technology allows your smartphone, for example, to make contactless payments once placed near a payment terminal, or to improve the connection between headsets and your phone. However, one of the main limitations of current NFC technology is its low range.
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NFC should see its reach increase in the coming years
Currently, for NFC connections to be successful, devices need to be within 5mm of each other, which makes the term “contactless payments” somewhat misleading. Indeed, it is not uncommon to have to put your smartphone on the payment terminal. Nevertheless, the NFC forum aims to multiply this range, in order to be able to make payments up to 3 cm away.
With this increased range and power, you might not even have to take your smartphone out of your purse to complete a transaction. It should also improve the stability of the connectionsince it sometimes happens that you have to move your smartphone to find the precise connection point.
Improved NFC range isn’t the only expected change. The NFC Forum also plans toincrease wireless charging power from currently 1W to 3W. That’s a lot less than the 15W predicted by the Qi standard, but it should be good for some devices like headphones.
The roadmap also plans to simplify transactions at points of sale. Apple introduced the Tap to Pay API, which allows developers to turn iPhones into payment terminals. Future NFC standards aim to make this functionality native, allowing businesses and individuals to receive payments anywhere effortlessly.
Finally, the NFC Forum is considering a “multi-tapping” feature to perform multiple actions with a single tap. For example, at an event, a single press could allow an entire group to enter instead of checking tickets one by one.