Current benefits and future directions of NFC services

Abstract

Near Field Communication (NFC), as an emerging and promising technology, is an integration of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology with mobile devices. NFC-enabled mobile devices can act as contactless smart cards and are also capable to read and write data from/to those cards. Research endeavours concerning NFC appear to focus mainly on development of NFC enabled services and applications. On the other hand, benefits and underlying values associated with different NFC applications' service is not yet well elaborated. In this paper we examined existing NFC applications, prototypes and studies from both academia and industry. We analyzed these applications by classifying them into NFC operating modes to surface the nature of underlying value-added services and benefits that they provide. Moreover we emphasized possible future usage scenarios together with directions and questions for future research based on the identified benefits.