More range and wireless charging: These changes are coming to NFC

The NFC Forum has published a roadmap to 2028, which aims to make the technology more useful. Increasing the range could have the greatest impact. However, charging via NFC remains slow despite a targeted tripling of performance

Faster payment and new usage options

NFC can be used to pair speakers with a smartphone, for example. However, the technology is likely to be much better known or at least used much more frequently, especially when paying with a smartphone or smartwatch. The increase in range is noticeable with card readers. Currently, you can hold a smartphone a maximum of 5 millimetres away for the transaction to take place. The NFC Forum wants to increase this range to 30 millimetres. The consortium hopes that this will make it quicker and easier to use - even beyond the checkout.

More than 400 companies have joined forces in the NFC Forum to promote the use of the technology and define common standards. This also includes ensuring that the technology can be used for wireless charging. The fact that this is hardly known and even less used is probably due to the current maximum output of one watt. However, this is to be increased to three watts in the next few years. However, with this tripling, NFC still lags well behind Qi, the leading standard for wireless charging with up to 15 watts.

In addition, several actions will be possible with one NFC contact in the future. The NFC Forum cites the issuing of payment receipts, registration for bonus programmes or tickets for public transport as examples.

Smartphones with NFC should also be able to accept payments. This would make them an alternative to card readers, especially for smaller businesses.

The NFC Forum has also discovered sustainability for itself. By 2028, it should be possible to use the technology to see the composition and recycling options of a product. To this end, the relevant data is to be stored in a format that can be read via NFC.