NFC – Near Field Communication – The New Standard
Smartphones with NFC are becoming a standard. In 2013 only around 250 million smart phone devices with NFC were shipped. The numbers increased each year by around 200 millions. In 2019 the numbers doubled to 400 millions per year to an estimated total of over 1,600 millions devices. The predicted numbers will skyrock to 600 millions in 2020 to a total of 2,200 millions devices world wide.

Video – NFC – How to use
APPLE goes big with NFC
Kraft NFC pilot delivers 12 times the engagement level of QR codes*
Nike Connect
NFC Payments
The use cases for NFC applications are growing constantly. Micro payments with smart phones are becoming common practice in many countries. It enables smart phone users to pay fast and easy by tapping the phone to the cashier system at a shop or restaurant without typing in an additional pin number. Up to a certain amount no pin is needed and bills over that amount have to be confirmed via pin. It is also possible to transfer your credit card to your smart phone and make credit card payments through your smart phone. Therefore it is not even neccessary to carry all your cards with you anymore.
Counter Feights
Customers can verify the authenticity of a product and make sure that they have an original high quality product. For companies and brands it is a very effective tool against counterfeights. Every nfc tag has a unique number by GS1 standards. GS1 is a global operating non-profit organisation for worldwide identical standards of processes across companies. It has member organisations in more than 100 countries and more than 1,5 million companies joining them. If a number of a nfc tag will be used multiple times, it is clear that it is a form of product piracy. Due to analytics it is possible to track down specific areas where abuse cases will occur and find their source.
Counterfeights crime represents as much as 2.5 % of world trade, or USD 461 billion*. Thus, rights holders, governments and the formal economy as a whole are suffering huge losses each year, while the criminal networks that are behind the trade profit enormously.
The situation in the EU is even worse: counterfeited and pirated products account for about 5 % of imports to the EU*. Thus the relative impact of counterfeiting is twice as high for the developed economies of the EU as it is for the world as a whole.
But the damage goes beyond the immediate impact of one and another loss. Counterfeiting and piracy are a threat to sustainable business models based on intellectual property and patenting, because they also discourage innovation and work against the economic growth that is based in it.
Manuals:
In many cases companies add thick and heavy paper manuals to their product packaging. Due to world wide sales it is written in multiple languages. With nfc it is possible to exclude manuals in paper form from the packaging. After tapping the tag the user will be redirected to a landing page, where they can choose and download the manual in the language they need. After the download it offers brands to engage with their consumers on a new level, for cross selling other products, sign up for newsletters, showing how to use the product videos, order spare parts and many more.
Find out more about the nfc possibilities and contact us.
*According to Europol