NFC Technology

What is NFC and how does NFC work?

 NFC isn’t some radically new technology. It’s simply an evolution of RFID (radio frequency identification) technology that has already been around for decades.

 If you’ve ever used a key card to access an office building or hotel room, you’re already familiar with how it works.

Both RFID and NFC operate on the principle of inductive coupling, at least for short-range implementations. This essentially involves the reader device generating a magnetic field by passing an electric current through a coil. When a tag (with its own coil) is brought nearby, the field induces an electric current within the tag — sans any wires or even physical contact. Then, once the initial handshake is complete, any stored data on the tag is wirelessly transmitted to the reader.

If you’re wondering about the security of near field communication  technology, that’s understandable.

The security of near field communication technology starts with “near”—NFC signals only transmit data centimeters from the NFC device, like a payment terminal. 

Unlike wireless internet technology, near field communication signals can’t be hacked from across town, across the street or even across the room.

Security protections afforded by smartphones make NFC contactless data transfer even more secure than other wireless technologies . In addition to the protections from tokenization of private and personally-identifying data, smartphones add an additional layer of personal authentication, like passwords and biometric security.

 All of this additional security is layered on top of existing fraud filters and other security measures like SSL Encryption, that helps protect all data transferred by the NFC cards embedded link.