To be fair, Google’s mobile payment solution actually pre-dated Apple’s by a couple of years, but the iPhone maker put a much stronger push behind marketing Apple Pay and getting banks and credit card companies to sign on. Hence, when Apple came along with Apple Pay in 2014, it was downright revolutionary. While most of Europe and Canada were already using physical contactless payment cards, the idea had never really taken off in the United States. Not surprisingly, the most popular use of NFC has turned out to be mobile payments. For instance, payment cards and security tags had already been using RFID for years, and since NFC was built on the same foundation, it turned out to be a near-perfect fit to integrate those features into smartphones and smartwatches. Once the initial excitement of having NFC built into smartphones calmed down a bit, companies began focusing on the more practical applications for which this contactless technology was much better suited. It was superseded by Fast Share, later renamed Nearby Share, to leverage Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, which offered better range and faster transfer speeds. However, the company soon found that most people didn’t want to hold their phones in close proximity for the amount of time it took to transfer photos and videos over a relatively slow NFC connection. For instance, Google came up with Android Beam as an idea for exchanging data between smartphones. What can NFC do on my phone? Christine Romero-Chan / Digital TrendsĪs with most new technologies, there were many early applications for NFC that never really got any traction. What is an eSIM? Here’s everything you need to know

How much is Spotify Premium and can you get a deal? All you need to do is place your smartphone within about four inches of another NFC device it should immediately detect it and be ready to go.

There are no manual pairing or device discovery steps or passwords to deal with. Perhaps most significantly, NFC doesn’t require you to jump through the kind of hoops that you may be used to with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi devices. In fact, NFC is an evolution of RFID that offers more advanced features and better security, but the two technologies still share a lot of things in common. The technology behind NFC is very similar to radio-frequency identification (RFID) commonly used in the security cards and keychain fobs that you likely already use to get into your office or gym. NFC, which is short for near-field communication, is a technology that allows devices like phones and smartwatches to exchange small bits of data with other devices and read NFC-equipped cards over relatively short distances. What is NFC, and how does it work? Joe Maring/Digital Trends

Nfc smart card reader android