NFC has many impressive use-cases due to its form factor and convenient scan-ability. These use cases break down into a few main categories.
Payments
NFC may be most well known for mobile payments, where it powers services like Apple Pay and Google Wallet. These solutions make shopping simple, with tap-to-purchase and added security.
Instead of using the same credit card number for each transaction, mobile payment solutions leverage the power of NFC card emulation to generate a single-use transaction key that can only be used once, and which expires within seconds. This technology makes it nearly impossible for bad actors to make unauthorized charges on an account.
Because NFC chips can be embedded into physical products, any item can become its own payment terminal. With just a tap customers can interact with an embedded product to make a purchase. Empowering objects to sell themselves streamlines the shopping experience and eliminates the need to stand in line to checkout.
Embedded Experiences
While NFC is a great technology for making purchases, it arguably provides more value after the sale, during an items use. Because NFC tags are small, durable, lightweight and inexpensive they can be embedded into physical products that would otherwise have no digital connectivity. Once embedded with NFC, those products are able to drive to online content with just a tap, connecting the physical and digital worlds.
This functionality opens up new possibilities where all physical things can have an online identity. This identity is often referred to as an experience because it augments and enhances the experience of owning an item. Because experiences exist online their possibilities are nearly endless. Marketers often take advantage of this, seeing it as an opportunity to provide consumers with relevant content, and a way to directly reach customers. Examples include: adidas World Cup Official Match Ball, Staple Pigeon, and Sneakercon authentic tags.
Product Authentication
Counterfeits have arisen as a real threat to customers seeking legitimate products, especially with fakes increasingly sold on legitimate sites like Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram. While some brands try to thwart these efforts with holograms, micro-threading and even QR codes, NFC provides the most secure product authentication.
Once a legitimate product is embedded with NFC at the factory, it is given a unique digital identity that can be verified by customers (using an app like decode) before purchase. This also makes it easy for retailers and brands to discover fake merchandise before it reaches unsuspecting customers.
Here we have a snapshot of some of NFC’s capabilities. To get a bigger picture of all of NFC’s uses cases, and how the technology works, check out the The Complete Guide to NFC.
