NFC Forum Publishes Its Latest Technology Roadmap

NFC Forum announced its latest roadmap for the development of NFC Forum Standards and its corresponding technical capabilities, six key initiatives that offer an insight into the future of NFC tech.

The roadmap was collaboratively developed by the NFC Forum Board members— including representatives from Apple, Google, Huawei, Identiv, Infineon, NuCurrent, NXP Semiconductors, Sony, and ST Microelectronics— in consultation with the NFC Forum membership and industry partners to ensure anticipated market requirements are addressed.

New topics to be progressed over the forthcoming years include faster data rates, end-to-end application testing, and security advancements. Additionally, ongoing work will continue to evolve the NFC Wireless Charging offer, advance multipurpose tap and explore new digital key requirements.

Developing NFC Forum Standards

Mike McCamon, Executive Director of NFC Forum said to ensure that each of these deployments work in the seamless manner that customers expect from NFC, it is vital that the NFC Forum develops global standards that deliver true industry harmonization.

“NFC is a well-established and trusted foundational technology for countless devices and use cases across almost every market,” said McCamon in a statement. “Furthermore, to enable these standards to be adopted and applied at scale, it is equally important that all NFC stakeholders are aware of our plans and engage with NFC Forum in our development processes. This approach ensures future evolutions continue to align with both their current NFC use cases as well as their long-term ambitions.”

Looking at the Roadmap

For more than 20 years, NFC Forum has empowered organizations to create innovative contactless experiences backed by intuitive, reliable and consistent NFC open standards. To continue moving forward, the six key roadmap priorities are:

• Faster Data Rates. Exploring the potential to increase the standardized current rate at which data can be transferred between two devices by up to eight times, delivering a smoother and more responsive NFC user experience.
• Improving Reader Mode Interoperability. Providing end-to-end interoperability testing to confirm that new and updated applications successfully and consistently operate on NFC Forum Certified Devices, improving NFC Reader Mode reliability across all use cases.
• Security Advancements. Publishing NFC Forum’s first-ever NFC Controllers Security Profile, as well as looking to future proof NFC security protocols against Post Quantum Computing threats and strengthening NFC against relay-based attacks.
• Wireless Power Evolution. Commencing work on the next generation of NFC Forum Wireless Charging Specifications to define device category specific profiles, support devices with multiple wireless charging receivers, and deliver higher charging power levels.
• Multi-Purpose Tap. Defining the technical proposals required to bring the concept of supporting several actions with a single ‘tap’ to market. This includes the ability of the NFC Reader to specify and request the specific credentials needed to perform a user action.
• Digital Keys. Exploring innovative new digital key experiences to ensure NFC Forum Standards support a range of industry requirements.

“The active engagement in the evolution of NFC technology from an ever-increasing number of industries is testament to the clear value it provides to users globally,” stated McCamon. “As we accelerate across the arc of contactless towards inevitable ubiquity, we encourage discussion and welcome new contributions from across the ecosystem.”