News

Industry bodies align to standardize on-device NFC service management

March 15, 2017

ETSI, GlobalPlatform and the NFC Forum have detailed a standardized approach to implementing and managing NFC services across all technologies and platforms, according to a press release.

The shared work initiative explains how to ensure that NFC services successfully coexist within a device and operate as intended.

The organizations said that the standardized approach clarifies how the ecosystem details the expected behavior of multiple NFC services hosted in the same device and simplifies the end-user experience.

Standardization benefits service providers offering NFC services in devices such as smartphones, and covers services such as payment, transport, loyalty and access control. The approach will also be of interest to OEMs developing devices that support NFC services, according to the announcement.

For consumers, standardization brings assurances that services will work as advertised, regardless of the hosting contactless environment selected by the service provider.

The defined framework supports:

• multiple NFC service applications coexisting within a device, with the ability to detect any potential conflicts;
• the activation of multiple NFC services at the same time within a single device;
• a consistent approach to the lifecycle management of NFC services to ensure standardized behavior;
• simplification of the end-user experience when selecting NFC services for entities such as mobile wallets providers; and
• secure elements already in the field, as all specifications are backwardly compatible.