NFC was co-developed by Philips and Sony Corp and is based on the ISO 18092 standard, representing an evolution from the contactless technology (ISO 14443) used in proximity cards for ticketing, access control and payment applications.
Whereas contactless technology puts a passive chip and antenna on a smartcard and requires a separate source emitting an electromagnetic field to be carried in order for it to work, NFC uses active devices that can be used in a cellphone, obviating the need to carry a separate reader/writer and making the phone the instrument for payment transactions and so on. The proximity required for read functions is 10 cm.
The first commercial deployment is in the German town of Hanau, whose public transport authority, the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund, has completed a 10-month field trial and is now to offer citizens carrying a specially configured Nokia 3220 phone on the Vodafone network to buy bus tickets electronically, as well as to use them as loyalty cards for discounts at local retail outlets and attractions.
A spokesperson for Eindhoven-based Philips said NFC came about because the Dutch company and its Japanese competitor Sony had each developed proprietary contactless technologies: in Philips’ case MIFARE, and in Sony’s the FeliCa product. At a certain point, they perceived the advantages of co-developing something that would be backward-compatible with both, enabling existing MIFARE and FeliCa infrastructures to be re-utilized wherever NFC is deployed.
