Near Field Communication (NFC) and charities

NFC or Near Field Communication to give it its full title, is a way for devices to exchange information with each other without having to plug in or even physically touch each other. Soon it will be used to create “contactless” payments where you can simply place your credit, debit or even phone onto a pad and the retailer can charge you for your purchase in seconds.

How does NFC work?

NFC uses small chips, sometimes called tags that have no power of their own but when scanned by an NFC reader a small electromagnetic charge brings the NFC tag to life and the data contained can be accessed by the reading device. A device can be both a reader and able to write to NFC tags and tags themselves can be write once or written to many times over.

What devices support NFC?

At the moment it’s mostly Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S3, Galaxy Nexus, Huawei Sonic (with NFC) and HTC Ruby (with NFC) and also the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 and BlackBerry Bold 9790  have NFC built in, most are capable of reading and writing and formatting NFC TAGS.

What can you put NFC tags into?

The great thing about NFC tags is they are relatively small. So far we have seen NFC placed into NFC Facebook stickers, keyfobs, wrist straps and posters.

Over time the tags will get even smaller, allowing for even more unique uses. Remember sticker tags are only at the start of their journey. Anything you can stick a tag on just became a smart object (Wikipedia: Internet of Things) capable of being scanned and offering data. The possibilities are endless.

A few ideas for using NFC tags

Due to the small size of NFC tags keyfobs and wristbands make ideal use for events to keep track of visitors and maybe a new form of silent auction where a tag is scanned and the bid placed from the phone. Posters and other marketing-related uses for tags are standard really. It’s when we look at what else you can place a tag into that things become more exciting.