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A significantly longer range for contactless transactions could be a reality in the market within the next two to five years, according to news released this week by the NFC Forum, the standards body for near-field communication technology.
The current standard for contactless payments is five millimeters, or about one-fifth of an inch, but a new criterion under consideration could stretch that distance by anywhere from four to six times, the Wakefield, Mass.-based organization said. At six times the current standard, a contactless transaction could occur at 30 millimeters, or a little more than an inch, away from a payment device.
“Even a modest increase in range would make contactless transactions and actions faster and easier,” the NFC Forum said in a release issued Wednesday about “roadmap innovation” priorities the group has issued concerning its plans for the next five years. The increase in distance between a payment card or mobile phone and a contactless terminal would also ease up on the “precision needed for antenna alignment,” the Forum said in its release.
The NFC Forum’s move toward easier and speedier NFC transactions comes as a little more than half of U.S. consumers say they are using contactless cards or mobile phones for payment at stores, according to research released last month by Mastercard Inc. Consumers adopted contactless cards and digital wallets like Apple Pay in droves after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 led to fears of infection from touching payment terminals. That popularity has maintained itself as consumers discover the method is quicker and easier than swiping, observers say.
Other contactless-payment priorities the Forum is looking to support by 2028 have to do with so-called multiple-purpose tap, or the ability to perform several functions at the same time. Among these functions could be point-to-point receipt delivery, loyalty identification, and so-called total journey ticketing, the Forum says.
The group has also placed a priority on so-called SoftPOS, or technology that allows off-the-shelf smart phones to accept contactless card transactions. Both Apple and Android developers have introduced this technology within the past couple of years.
The current “roadmap” is the result of work by a group put together a little more than a year ago to gather information from a variety of industries, the 400-member Forum says. With an expected timeline of anywhere from two to five years, the work lies in various stages of development, the 19-year-old organization adds.
