The Uses of Near Field Communication (NFC)

NFC or Near Field Communication system is a new technology that enables people to share and transfer data through radio signals at a close range. You may be well aware of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that enable you to share data, music and videos at a close range. NFC works on similar lines too. The only difference here would be that it performs all kinds of data transfer at a very close range, say just a few centimeters. The concept is new and interesting. NFC enabled devices will work by a simple tap. That means, if you want to transfer a song or a video to your friend’s mobile phone, you just need to tap your phone to his phone and the connection between the two phones would be instantly setup and the data would be transferred automatically. Some of the uses of near field technology (NFC) would be to make payments and for proximity marketing.

NFC as a payment option in the future

NFC is already used by some mobile phone manufacturers to provide data transfer facility. Out of the many benefits this new technology has, one of the most important is thing that it enables you to make payments directly through your mobile phone. Here, you won’t need to carry any cash or carry even you credit or debit card. All the payments could be made by the simple tap of your phone. The NFC device would store the credit/debit card information of the person and when he wants to pay for any purchase, he taps the phone to the other NFC device which is responsible for the money transactions and the money would be transferred.

Proximity marketing through NFC

If a businessman wanted to promote the discount offer that he had at his store, he would place some NFC posters outside his store and invite people to tap their phones to the poster to avail the benefits of the discount offer. When the person taps the phone to the NFC tagged poster, he would get the information on his phone that there is a discount offer available at a particular store and the person can avail it simply taking that received information to the seller. The message so received would act as a discount coupon. Providing seller information to the customers would now be an easy task. There won’t be any fliers involved here and the information would reach the customer directly. The use of NFC tags would mean that the seller would have to invest smaller amounts of money for promoting his products, offers or services. The tags don’t need any batteries to work. These tags when placed on a poster can help the customer with the information he needs. He just needs to tap it in order to obtain the seller information.