You may be able to pay for purchases and get into train stations without having to physically touch your phone to an NFC terminal in the future. The NFC Forum, which defines the standards for NFC, has revealed a roadmap for key research and plans for near field communication through 2028. Apparently, one of the main priorities for the future of the technology is to increase its range. At the moment, NFC only works if two enabled devices are within 5 millimeters from each other, but the group says it’s currently examining ranges that are “four to six times the current operating distance.”
That’s 30 millimeters or 1.18 inches at most, but it could enable faster transactions and fewer failed ones overall, seeing as a longer range also means there’s a lower precision requirement for antenna alignment. In addition, the forum is looking to improve the current NFC wireless charging specification of 1 watt to 3 watts. The capability will bring wireless charging to “new and smaller form factors,” the forum said, but didn’t give examples of what those form factors could look like.
Another potential future NFC capability will support several actions with a single tap. Based on the sample use cases the forum listed — point-to-point receipt delivery, loyalty identification and total-journey ticketing — we could be looking at the possibility of being able to validate transit tickets or venue tickets for the whole family with just one tap or a single device. NFC-enabled smartphones could have the power to serve as point-of-sale devices in the future, as well. Apple’s Tap to Pay feature already lets iPhone owners use their phones as payment terminals. But a standardized capability would allow more people, especially in developing countries where Android is more prevalent, to use their devices to offer payments for their small businesses and shops.
These plans are in varying stages of development right now, with some further along than others. The forum doesn’t have a clear timeline for their debut yet, but it said that the timeframe for its plans spans two to five years. NFC tech could get faster and go fully contactless within the next five years
5mm? The NFC forum themselves list the range as 2cm, I use it frequently and you definitely do not need to be within 5mm.
Yeah, definitely bigger than 5mm…
There’s been so many times when I accidentally trigger the sensor with my phone when I am simply choosing a tip option.
When I was living in London I just had to wave my phone vaguely in the direction of the pay point to get in the tube. I’d say minimum 55mm
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I’ve worked on certification of NFC payment readers and the payment providers like Visa and MasterCard require that they work reliably out to 4 or 5cm or else they won’t be certified as payment devices. And without those certifications they’re not allowed to be used to accept payments.
The exact requirements vary for each payment provider but you can assume that cards will work 5cm from the reader and probably a bit beyond. We even had a robot at the place I worked at which would hold the card at hundreds of different positions around the reader to check where it worked and didn’t work. From memory MasterCard require that it can successfully read the card in 80% of locations within a “constellation” of points around the tap symbol.