Near Field Communication to get longer, stronger – better at contactless
- Reference: 1687760949
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/06/26/nfc_forum_innovation_roadmap/
- Source link:
Forum members include Apple, Google, Qualcomm, Sony, NXP and Huawei – a group that builds and packages plenty of NFC chips into plenty of devices. The group's roadmap is therefore a decent hint at the kind of experience that will come to smartphones and other NFC-equipped kit in coming years.
The Forum's five "roadmap innovation priorities" are as follows:
Increased Power for NFC Wireless Charging. The current NFC Wireless Charging specification offers up to one watt of power and plans are to increase these capabilities up to three watts. This change will bring wireless power and charging to new and smaller form factors, disrupting industrial design and defining new markets.
Increased Range. Today, NFC connections are limited to a range of 5mm, but the NFC Forum is in the process of examining ranges that are four to six times the current operating distance. Even a modest increase in range would make contactless transactions and actions faster and easier. It would also improve usability by decreasing the precision needed for antenna alignment.
Multiple Purpose Tap. This feature will further improve the contactless user experience by supporting several actions with a single tap. The use cases driving this work include point-to-point receipt delivery, loyalty identification, and total-journey ticketing.
Modernizing Device-to-Device Communication. Designed to empower NFC-enabled smartphones to have Point-of-Sale functionality (SoftPOS), allowing businesses or individuals to receive payments anywhere.
Expanding NFC's Ability to Share Data Formats Needed for Sustainability. Enabling NFC to share data on its composition and ways a product can be recycled, helping to meet evolving consumer demands, and regulatory requirements, as well as contributing to a healthy circulatory economy.
The Forum has warned world+dog that not all of the above will land together – or by 2028.
"The individual work items are currently in varying stages of development, ranging from research to market requirements to draft specifications," the org advised, adding that it will "collaborate with its 400 members and various industry bodies to extend the reach of its roadmap and ensure its work program is complementary to other industry initiatives."
[1]
So don't get too excited about fast wireless charging or throwing out your point-of-sale kit just yet.
[2]Japan's digital ID card gets emergency review amid data leaks
[3]Apple, Google propose anti-stalking spec for Bluetooth tracker tags
[4]Fast-evolving Prilex POS malware can block contactless payments
[5]How to reprogram Apple AirTags, play custom sounds
And if that longer range tech becomes reality, brace for dubious claims of stronger anti-skimming tech to protect the content of your wallets from crims conducting stride-by scanning of your phone or cards. Perhaps prepare, too, for a little more care at point of sale: your correspondent has been known to accidentally pay with my default card before I even had time to select another – and that was with today's less sensitive NFC tech.
The Forum will run a webinar to detail the above plans on June 27 at 09:00 ET/14:00 GMT/22:00 JST, for which you can register [6]here . ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZJlhwVSXWN-I-3C@bmSZ1AAAAoE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/22/japan_my_number_security_review/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/02/apple_google_antistalking_bluetooth/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/03/prilex_malware_contactless_payments/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/apple_airtag_sounds/
[6] https://nfc-forum.org/events/webinar-technology-roadmap/
[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
My thoughts exactly but I suppose on the plus side it would make those expensive "RFID" blocking wallets actually useful. That actually gives me an idea. Faraday Wallets or better yet clothing with Faraday pockets.
Giving a POS terminal the capacity to 'reach' into your wallet or your phone and take a payment
oh, but it's not about YOUR convenience or mine, it's about [...], and to achieve that, making payments should be less... painful, less...less of a chore, less noticeable, out of sight, out of mind, right? Easier to pay = more likely to pay. More likely to pay = [...].
It's not like this 'improvement' / developement has been lobbied for by you, me, or any other minion. But there are some smart people, paid very well, contactless or otherwise, and their job is to understand, ever better and in finer detail, what makes you and me tick, and they come up with new and ingineous ways to extract money, contactless or otherwise from me and you. Wait for the eye-blink payment, you might see it faster than you think. No, stop, too much effort. Neural lace payments, that's it. Or perhaps sir would prefer his AI assistant, a perfect copy of sir's self, but turbo-charged with our financial acumen enhacement mode (recurring subscription), to handle the process instead? Click [fuckknowswhere] to decline.
been known to accidentally pay with my default card
I'm going to get downvoted for this - but there's a lot to be said for reaching into a physical wallet to select a physical card before presenting that card to a reader...
Back when NFC was new
Amateurs were getting a range of 30cm with Pringle tin based antennas. RF engineers with the equipment required to tune their antennas accurately were getting 60cm.
I asked my bank nicely and they issued me with an NFCless card. The antenna in the card is a loop running near the outside edges. One cut in that loop will ensure your NFC payment card is completely secure.
increased range needs to be optional
"...your correspondent has been known to accidentally pay with my default card before I even had time to select another ..." - yep, this happened to me just the other day. This should be a simple fix with software, as an option for the user.
And other comments above concern 'stride-by' skimming of people's cards. Firstly, that's one reason why phones are more secure. They identify the user and need a positive action before any payment can be taken.
But to keep the cards safe, this could be fixed by encoding into the payment card information about how close a card needs to be before it's accepted as a payment. That way, it'll need a very positive 'tap' onto the payment device. We don't need that working any further than it does now... I can't think of any use cases where this would benefit anyone.
Re: increased range needs to be optional
protect the content of your wallets from crims conducting stride-by scanning of your phone or cards.
I'm not sure that changes to the standard will have much impact here, it's not like anyone running such a skimming operation will be rigourously sticking to the power and antenna limits as defined in the standard. The cards are unpowered, unless they have some way to detect how far away the reader is then they have no way to know if the terminal is using legal power output, or 10x that.
Re: increased range needs to be optional
Indeed. The range is defined by (obviously) the antenna efficiency of the card or phone NFC, but also by the power and sensitivity of the energisation and detection circuitry. I work with 130kHz systems, and we pay a lot of attention to timing accuracy and circuit noise to get the best range we can (to detect a cat, in our case).
Obviously I'm not going to discuss company confidential information here, but I do note that simply increasing the power does not always increase the range...
Can we have a light sensor on the cards too please.
It seems a really simple way to make sure the cards don't work when in your pocket. If the light sensor is in a standardized place on the card, wallets could be made that expose that area when opened. No need to take the card out.
May be slightly annoying in dingy nightclubs though.
Re: Can we have a light sensor on the cards too please.
Well, yes, maybe, but (a) all the power that drives the chip on the card is harvested from and during the interrogation phase; there isn't a lot to spare, and (b) I have five different cards with NFC antenae in my wallet... I'm sure I'm not the only one who has more than one account (as indeed the article author obviously has, if one of them is 'default'. For me 'default' changes depending which country I am in and what I am purchasing.
"Longer and Stronger" seems to me to be actually backward steps in this respect.
If it's wireless charging, the further away, the more inefficient it will be. What's the idea here, to saturate a room with so much power that your phone will charge while it's in your pocket?
And with regards to contactless payment, one of the most important things has to be that payments can only be made with a positive action on the users' part, hence the 'tapping'. Giving a POS terminal the capacity to 'reach' into your wallet or your phone and take a payment is nuts.