Near Field Communication to get longer, stronger – better at contactless

The NFC Forum, the standards body for Near Field Communication, has detailed its key plans and research efforts between now and 2028. Forum members include Apple, Google, Qualcomm, Sony, NXP and Huawei – a group that builds and packages plenty of NFC chips into plenty of devices. The group's roadmap is therefore a decent hint …

[jmch]

"Longer and Stronger" seems to me to be actually backward steps in this respect.

If it's wireless charging, the further away, the more inefficient it will be. What's the idea here, to saturate a room with so much power that your phone will charge while it's in your pocket?

And with regards to contactless payment, one of the most important things has to be that payments can only be made with a positive action on the users' part, hence the 'tapping'. Giving a POS terminal the capacity to 'reach' into your wallet or your phone and take a payment is nuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly but I suppose on the plus side it would make those expensive "RFID" blocking wallets actually useful. That actually gives me an idea. Faraday Wallets or better yet clothing with Faraday pockets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah... eelskin is best...

;^)

The new tech will then be reading the cards in the pockets of the guy behind you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving a POS terminal the capacity to 'reach' into your wallet or your phone and take a payment

oh, but it's not about YOUR convenience or mine, it's about [...], and to achieve that, making payments should be less... painful, less...less of a chore, less noticeable, out of sight, out of mind, right? Easier to pay = more likely to pay. More likely to pay = [...].

It's not like this 'improvement' / developement has been lobbied for by you, me, or any other minion. But there are some smart people, paid very well, contactless or otherwise, and their job is to understand, ever better and in finer detail, what makes you and me tick, and they come up with new and ingineous ways to extract money, contactless or otherwise from me and you. Wait for the eye-blink payment, you might see it faster than you think. No, stop, too much effort. Neural lace payments, that's it. Or perhaps sir would prefer his AI assistant, a perfect copy of sir's self, but turbo-charged with our financial acumen enhacement mode (recurring subscription), to handle the process instead? Click [fuckknowswhere] to decline.

[hoola]

This has all the attributes of being the solution to a problem that only exists in the mind of "the yoof of today",

Contactless was so that you did not have to put the card into a reader and type a ping (most of the time).

Making the contactless distance greater appears to me to be complete lunacy. There is a very finite limit to how far that "Near" can be before you get interference and mis-reading from surrounding cards and phones.

I am thinking busy places like stations and buses where touch and go is implemented.

[bazza]

In the early days of contact less payment M&S had problems where the readers were too good, picking up credit cards from a customer at a neighbouring till. Looking like we're heading back to the exciting days of explaining to the missus unexpected lingerie bills having popped in only for a set of comfy man sized undercrackers...

[Neil Barnes]

been known to accidentally pay with my default card

I'm going to get downvoted for this - but there's a lot to be said for reaching into a physical wallet to select a physical card before presenting that card to a reader...

[cookieMonster]

Re: been known to accidentally pay with my default card

That more or less sums up exactly what I do, every time.

Simply don’t trust the tech yet.

Icon: it’s me, a grumpy old man

[TheMaskedMan]

Re: been known to accidentally pay with my default card

"it’s me, a grumpy old man"

Likewise. What's so hard about wafting a card over a reader, anyway? Remember when we had to scrabble through our many capacious pockets for a pen then sign the receipt? Often repeating until we found a pen that worked?

Range seems fine as it is, too. It works through glass, as used in several late night petrol stations, how much further does it need to be?

[Someone Else]

Re: been known to accidentally pay with my default card

I'm going to get downvoted for this [...]

No, you're not...at least by anybody with an IQ above room temperature.

_{That can be either Fahrenheit or Celsius}

[DS999]

Re: been known to accidentally pay with my default card

What do you mean "accidentally pay with your default card"? NFC payments don't work without authentication, unless you have enabled what Apple calls "Express Transit Mode" or the Android equivalent, but that should only be used for something like a subway turnstile not for point of sale transactions.

[GDM]

Re: been known to accidentally pay with my default card

For travel, I always prefer to tap with physical card and leave my phone tucked away somewhere, on the grounds that I can disable the card from my phone but not the other way around.

(People, you're coming up to a barrier, have your ticket or method of payment *ready*, don't suddenly act all surprised...)

[Flocke Kroes]

Back when NFC was new

Amateurs were getting a range of 30cm with Pringle tin based antennas. RF engineers with the equipment required to tune their antennas accurately were getting 60cm.

I asked my bank nicely and they issued me with an NFCless card. The antenna in the card is a loop running near the outside edges. One cut in that loop will ensure your NFC payment card is completely secure.

[Somone Unimportant]

Re: Back when NFC was new

A cut in the loop may stop tap and go, but it won't stop insertion of a credit card being approved for payments up to a certain amount without needing a PIN.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Back when NFC was new

Yes, that's the point.

[Someone Else]

Re: Back when NFC was new

I asked my bank nicely and they issued me with an NFCless card.

Who is your bank? I asked the nice folks at Visa, and they basically handed me a hammer, and directed me to the beach.

Nicking the edge of my card sounds like a right fine idea. Thanks!

[anthonyhegedus]

increased range needs to be optional

"...your correspondent has been known to accidentally pay with my default card before I even had time to select another ..." - yep, this happened to me just the other day. This should be a simple fix with software, as an option for the user.

And other comments above concern 'stride-by' skimming of people's cards. Firstly, that's one reason why phones are more secure. They identify the user and need a positive action before any payment can be taken.

But to keep the cards safe, this could be fixed by encoding into the payment card information about how close a card needs to be before it's accepted as a payment. That way, it'll need a very positive 'tap' onto the payment device. We don't need that working any further than it does now... I can't think of any use cases where this would benefit anyone.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: increased range needs to be optional

protect the content of your wallets from crims conducting stride-by scanning of your phone or cards.

I'm not sure that changes to the standard will have much impact here, it's not like anyone running such a skimming operation will be rigourously sticking to the power and antenna limits as defined in the standard. The cards are unpowered, unless they have some way to detect how far away the reader is then they have no way to know if the terminal is using legal power output, or 10x that.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: increased range needs to be optional

Indeed. The range is defined by (obviously) the antenna efficiency of the card or phone NFC, but also by the power and sensitivity of the energisation and detection circuitry. I work with 130kHz systems, and we pay a lot of attention to timing accuracy and circuit noise to get the best range we can (to detect a cat, in our case).

Obviously I'm not going to discuss company confidential information here, but I do note that simply increasing the power does not always increase the range...

[jmch]

Re: increased range needs to be optional

"Firstly, that's one reason why phones are more secure. They identify the user and need a positive action before any payment can be taken."

That 'positive action' is exactly what is always needed to make any payment. Allowing a card to be read from a distance larger than right adjacent to the reader (about 2-3 cm and certainly not more than 5) increases possible risk of abuse. And as many people have already pointed out, the card has no idea how far away it is from the reader, only how strong the signal is that it's getting.

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: increased range needs to be optional

Yes, you're right. Crims of course can alter the hardware or firmware in the payment processor. I wonder if it's possible for a very simple processor in the card itself to do some sort of check to measure the distance using timing pulses or something. I'm not a hardware engineer so this is just speculation but I really think that before we start increasing the range we need ways of ensuring that payments aren't taken unknowingly just because someone sits next to you on the train

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we have a light sensor on the cards too please.

It seems a really simple way to make sure the cards don't work when in your pocket. If the light sensor is in a standardized place on the card, wallets could be made that expose that area when opened. No need to take the card out.

May be slightly annoying in dingy nightclubs though.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Can we have a light sensor on the cards too please.

Well, yes, maybe, but (a) all the power that drives the chip on the card is harvested from and during the interrogation phase; there isn't a lot to spare, and (b) I have five different cards with NFC antenae in my wallet... I'm sure I'm not the only one who has more than one account (as indeed the article author obviously has, if one of them is 'default'. For me 'default' changes depending which country I am in and what I am purchasing.

[katrinab]

Re: Can we have a light sensor on the cards too please.

In the dingy nightclub, you could put the card into some sort of illuminated slot?

[Gene Cash]

"Why does my credit card have a hole in it?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_st471JEU

He keeps his cards in one of those "wallets" attached to the back of the phone, so he disabled the antenna in his cards so it wouldn't interfere with the NFC reader in his phone.

He specifically mentions that he asked his bank for a non-NFC card and they told him to go piss up a rope.

[IGotOut]

They missed the huge one...

"As you move around, it makes it easier to track you around the store / town. We can then correlate this with your purchasing and sell this info to anyone that wants it"

I guess that one must of been on page 2 of the press release.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: They missed the huge one...

Sounds like part 3. The one before Profit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple cards.

If they're looking to output more power for charging, using this minuscule amount more in the card electronics shouldn't be a big problem. As for multiple cards, a wallet that opens like a book with multiple pages sounds like the way to do it. Open to the card you want to use and that's the only one that responds.

Maybe you could have a plastic box kind of thing to hold your cards with buttons on and LEDs between the cards to select the one that responds.

Then going even further, you could store them virtually on a device with NFC that has a UI to allow you to choose them, you could even add the electronics needed to make phone calls to that.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Multiple cards.

a wallet that opens like a book with multiple pages sounds like the way to do it

Oh, yes, that's exactly what I want. A thicker wallet.

you could store them virtually on a device with NFC that has a UI to allow you to choose them

Considering the reliability of such devices, that just might have some adverse failure modes, particularly when far from home.

I'll stick with actual physical cards, thanks. And cut the antennas to disable NFC, which as far as I'm concerned offers me no utility whatsoever.

[fattybacon]

Re: Multiple cards.

I'm surprised so much of the comments here are about physical cards. Surely that ship has sailed? If you are happy with NFC payments then your phone is holding all your cards already? I've long stopped taking out my wallet. I have a default card for bonking, and I can choose any of the others at POS.

[Big_Boomer]

The range matters because the terminal first remotely powers the chip in your card, then it exchanges data with it. To increase both the power transmission and the data transmission range they will need more efficient antennas and transmission circuits in the card as well as in the terminal, so this will make it easier for skimmers and other scum to steal your money. As someone above said, with your smartphone NFC you have to enable it first so there is volition on your part, but if embedded into bank cards this will make the skimmers life SOOOoooo much easier. There is something very Big Brother about how payment methods are going.

[DS999]

but if embedded into bank cards this will make the skimmers life SOOOoooo much easier

I remember when Faraday cage wallets first came out I laughed, but maybe we'll all be forced to use them someday!

In the US at least there is zero liability for credit card fraud and the burden of proof is on the merchant if there's a dispute, so I'm not worried about those being skimmed. The thing I'd be worried about is my bank card, if a future version of it supported NFC. Skimming is not something I'd think is likely to happen to me around town but when traveling in big cities / major airports it is probably a legit concern especially if they increase the range and make criminals' jobs easier.

Hopefully if my bank card does support NFC in the future it will be possible to get an old school one that doesn't support it. I'm not sure if my bank still offers it but in the past you could request an ATM card that is only an ATM card and not also a debit card. I had one for a while until it started cracking (it was a lot thinner than standard debit/credit cards) and gave in when I replaced it because I didn't want to risk having it break while traveling when I really needed it. Pretty sure I have still never made a single debit transaction with it.

[DS999]

I've never found range to be an issue

I use my iPhone for payments at the grocery store, gas station and other places all the time and there's no way I'm holding it 5mm away - that's almost impossible to do without accidentally tapping. I'm guessing most of the time I'm bringing my phone to within a couple inches perhaps, which is more like 5cm. Are we sure they didn't get their units wrong?