2012 Will Be The Year NFC Breaks Big--Just Not In The U.S. | Hacker News Reader

2012 Will Be The Year NFC Breaks Big--Just Not In The U.S.

fastcompany.com

72 pointskul32 comments

The China gov is working with banks and its social services orgs to integrate all accounts on a "smart card" that is an NFC connected to your phone SIM. This works as both a stored value card for things like subway entrance as well as purchases made for health services by deducting from your health care account, etc.. The roll out is happening now. I'm not sure when all 260 million cards are scheduled to be out, but a 15 million card rollout is happening in the next few months.

I am working with one of the companies supplying the cards. They and their banking partners are highly interested in value added services (better payment systems, etc) to latch on to this train thats about to leave the station. Feel free to contact me if you have any ideas ;)

hey, can you contact me at kul@tagstand.com? be good to talk.

I was aghast when I read that the Square COO didn't see much value in NFC (http://gigaom.com/2011/09/26/square-mobilize-2011/). After spending a lot of time in Seoul where it's possible to pay for a ton of stuff via T-money card (a clipper-card-like NFC card for the public transit system), I hate pulling out my card to swipe or counting cash.

NFC can phenomenally improve the experience of nearly everything we do right now, and I expect Tagstand to bring the NFC revolution to the US.

Can't help but be a bit jealous of these guys though, their execution has been amazing, they seem to be doing everything right! If you're looking to do some NFC stuff, I'd recommend Tagstand in a heartbeat.

Thank you.

I think Square are ultimately technology agnostic, but they don't want the "nfc = payments" meme to spread, not quite sure why. But yes, after travelling through Asia and seeing nfc payments in action, I totally agree.

The Hong Kong anecdote is true. I was surprised that places wouldn't accept credit card but would happily accept my transit card for payments. It's a big opportunity in other emerging markets.

  > they don't want the "nfc = payments" meme to spread,
  > not quite sure why

Maybe because it takes away from the idea that Square will be able to dominate? Maybe they see the spread of NFC as a way that the current credit card companies can jump on the tech bandwagon and edge Square out? Dunno.

Square reminds me of the Netbook in 2009. They were very successful in the short time but they weren't moving forward and everyone knew the tablet would eventually rule.

NFC will eventually take over and they'll either fade out or have to rethink.

re: square -- consider the source.

it makes sense that the square coo would be "anti nfc." the notion of "nfc payments" as the way of the future detracts from the vision he's pitching -- that is "square payments" are the way of the future.

whether nfc ends up being integrated into square or not, and whether or not nfc is useful in the payments vertical is irrelevant to him. square likely wants you to think about square and only square when you think about mobile payments going forward...

Have you seen https://squareup.com/cardcase? It looks like it leapfrogs NFC.

What is so phenomenal about what Tagstand is doing? It appears to be just client side NFC with a library like zxing

http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/

What am I missing?

NFC offers two big opportunities. The first is NFC as hardware, which is what Tagstand is doing. I agree that this is a fairly straightforward business.

The second, and arguably much larger, opportunity is the software component, which we haven't really seen yet. There's a whole world of programs and services that can be built around this hardware once it's in use.

...Unless the next iPhone supports NFC

this is what will actually make it take off I believe. While a subset of Android devices support it, the marketing push it will receive when Apple bring it to their devices is what will drive adoption. All the news articles and other coverage that come when a new iPhone is announced will talk about how the new iphone is making the wallet obsolete etc, and people will get their first introduction to the technology.

I was disappointed the 4S didn't support it, as it would have been a good feature that only the 4S would have.

Apple will probably be the last to the NFC party. They are (smartly?) letting the other manufacturers bring the technology to the market.

I believe the only reason that Apple (and the 4S) doesn't have NFC is that all the negotiations haven't been worked out yet. The technology is there and Apple has the know-how to make it a great user experience, but neither Apple nor Google live in a bubble. They need carrier support for NFC to work. Otherwise, they won't let NFC phones on their network. And don't forget Visa, Mastercard, et al. They want in on the action too.

As an average end user, what specific problem is NFC going to solve for me? I just don't get it.

When people talk about NFC, most people seem to be talking about only payments. The article talks about other uses as well for NFC. To me, NFC is a bridge between the real world and the virtual world. I look at an NFC tag on an object or a physical entity as really a door that leads to its digital manifestation in the virtual world. Some things are done better (or can only be done) in the real world and some are done better in the virtual world. For example, walking into a store to take a look at the product and try it out for yourself has to be done in the real world! However, finding out what others think about it or it's pricing history is better done online. What NFC does is marry the two worlds seamlessly. Where previously the user had to do this manually on his phone while at the store, a scan of the NFC tag could readily bring up all the relevant information. Bar codes and QR codes make this possible as well - so I cannot quite answer yet why NFC tags would be better for this. But there are other cases of active-active interactions (as opposed to active-passive interactions) where a passive bar code or QR code wouldn't be enough. A good example of this is authenticating someone in person where authentication relies on both the physical proximity (which is established with an NFC scan) and a crypto protocol to establish the identity that is best handled by your mobile device. Mobile payments happens to be one use-case of the active-active interaction where physical proximity is transformed to an interaction in the virtual world. Admittedly the biggest use-case though.

NFC is easier for the customer compared to bar codes. They just have to touch the tag, whereas with barcodes they have to use a scanning app and so on...

Remove million cards from my wallet. From bank to subway to airlines. Hell, this may remove the whole damn wallet.

I can think of one: http://shopulator.me

"Shopulator lets you tabulate the running total on your grocery cart by tapping your phone against the product price tag as you put it in your cart. The information is stored in the "cloud" (aka the internet) so people can create grocery lists, shop collaboratively & more."

disclaimer: i created shopulator.me

So eventually you don't have to carry a wallet.

NFC will only spread wildly if all handset/OS makers as well as the carriers open card emulation and the encryption interface necessary to do banking. Right now, we're stuck in this position where everyone is more than happy to have all the non-secure critical aspects of NFC (like smart posters) where there is little market incentive - and control and monopolise purchasing, coupon offers, membership and loyalty etc etc.

What's exactly the difference between NFC and RFID? The NFC Forum FAQ isn't very clear.

Here in Portugal (and AFAIK in multiple European countries) we use contactless cards for public transportation, but that's about it; payments are still done with debit cards or cash.

Basically the 'card' is in your phone, which has a battery and a CPU, so it can secure the communication of your identity which is tied to your bank information.

The radio frequency is identical.

Yeah, but in the article they talk about the Octopus, which is a real card instead of a phone, as an NFC device.

They're basically the same thing with different ranges. NFC has a range of about 4cm, RFID goes up to a couple of metres I think. NFC is generally used when you want to make sure someone gets really close, which is generally the case with payments. You don't want someone able to interact with your credit card from several metres away without you knowing about it.

Presumably, just getting close to the card is not enough to initiate a payment? Most tables/desks are less than 4cm thick...

No, it's not sufficient (you'd need something pretending to be a terminal) but it is necessary which makes it much harder with NFC than RFID.

NFC has a huge uphill battle in the US.

It is not for the lack of ideas, nor is it the lack of people trying to build interesting technology with it. It is because of the carriers.

Yes, the carriers, like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.

Before I explain why the carriers are the problems, let's step back and talk about how NFC payment works. On every NFC phone, there is a chip that is called the secure element. The secure element is the location on your phone that is separate from the operating system that stores highly encrypted data that only trusted programs can access. This is the only secure location on your phone that one can safely and securely store payment credentials. Storing payment credential on any other part of the phone exposes it to abuse.

On the NFC-enabled phones in your pocket, the carriers have full control of the secure element. They are actively preventing other companies from using this to store any information and fully utilizing NFC to their potential as a digital wallet.

The reason they are doing this is that Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have a joint venture called Isis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISIS_(mobile_payment_system)]. Through this joint venture, they want to own a piece of the mobile payment market. Anyone that wants to create a mobile wallet must pay them for the right to do so. (Notice how the Google Wallet launched on the only carrier that is not part of the joint venture?)

[see http://www.nfctimes.com/news/isis-plans-launch-three-banks-c...] "In addition, Isis plans to charge fees to banks and other service providers to rent space on their SIM cards or other secure elements in the NFC phones the carriers sell."

See also: http://www.nfctimes.com/news/google-nfc-platforms-should-be-... _______________________ "Dickson Chu, Citi’s head of global enterprise payments for digital networks and mobile, speaking at a conference earlier this month, reportedly complained that Isis was taking the role of a “gatekeeper.” Isis would charge fees to banks and other service providers to rent space on its SIM cards or other secure elements, as many mobile operators plan to do when they roll out NFC. That’s in addition to charging fees for delivering coupons or offers. Google plans to charge fees from advertisers for delivering coupons and other offers but not from payment service providers.

“It's unclear what they (Isis telcos) are trying to achieve, other than extract a toll as gatekeepers,” Chu reportedly said. “There's so much more that they could do...as it is they are just hampering the development of NFC as a mass-market commercial proposition.” _______________________

Maybe, but NFC can also be used as a communication technology, and there are no gatekeepers there.

Except there's less money in it. There is money in payment services and membership/coupons, however.

I agree it's messy. Is it possible to talk? kul at tagstand.com

Someone isn't paying attention.

A lot of smartphones are acquiring NFC capability (the so-called "android beam"). One of the most popular new toys this year uses NFC as an integral feature (Skylanders).

NFC will soon be standard on a lot of phones, and once the installed base becomes significant then it's only a matter of time before usage becomes significant as well. Especially when you remember that with smartphones and tablets there's no need to wait for a substantial build out of expensive fixed infrastructure.

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