More than 100 million mobile phones, tablets and e-readers
equipped with near-field communication technology were sold in 2012, and an
estimated 300 million more are expected to be shipped this year, according to
industry analysts. Promoters of the wireless technology, which enables secure
information exchange when devices are within inches of each other, are trying
to prompt such industry sectors as payment and transport to devise and
implement uses. The Near Field Communications Forum, a trade association that
for nearly a decade has developed standards, certification procedures and
education in building infrastructure, in January formed payment and transport
interest groups, as well as three others.
Creating special interest groups is about "how we pivot
from device availability and development of specifications to large-scale usage
of those devices and many, many programs rolling out," said NFC Forum vice
chairman James Anderson, who works as MasterCard's group head and senior vice
president for mobile and emerging payments.
NFC Forum director Debbie Arnold, formerly with Visa, noted
that the association created the special interest groups for payment and
transport, as well as the consumer electronics, healthcare and retail sectors,
to "make sure we educate people on use cases specific for their market,
work with industry sectors to understand how to overcome any implementation
issues and take those best practices and lessons learned and share them
throughout the market. Also, we want to ensure that our specifications are
robust enough to handle the requirements of those markets and that our
certification is as quick and as easy" as it can be.
To forge the special interest groups, the forum approached
other standard-setting organizations including EMVCo, a company that developed
standards for chip-based credit cards; GS1, the entity best known for
developing universal retail product barcodes; and the International Air
Transport Association, the trade group that represents 240 airlines that handle
84 percent of global air traffic.
Payment is a "great use for NFC and why" so many
payment networks use the technology for mobile wallets and other initiatives,
Anderson said. NFC today is used to "move payment, event or ticketing
information to a mobile phone," read tags to provide schedules or
additional information and exchange information, according to the forum.
Within transport, NFC "enables a lot of things,"
according to Arnold, from boarding access to tags on a poster or in a train
station that, when activated, can provide a schedule, map or additional
information, or can be used to order a taxi.
To explore ways that NFC could be used in transport, the
forum "brought in a bunch of airlines to our meeting last fall and did our
first deep dive," Arnold said. "We were very pleased and surprised by
the level of knowledge they had about NFC, and we think NFC can take over the
airline industry shortly."
Stephan Copart, project manager for IATA's Fast Travel
Program, said the organization several years ago "identified NFC as a
potential benefit" for many of the process efficiencies it found could
speed travelers through airports and onto planes, and lower industry costs.
Fast Travel is a 14-step process that is part of IATA's Simplifying The
Business program, which launched in 2004. It is designed to promote passenger
self-service, from pre-travel actions through the airport experience.
"We identified six main areas where we can see concrete
requirements with NFC, where a token could be used for ticket issuance,
check-in, baggage processing and collection, security access and lounge access
control," said Copart, discussing the benefits of industry collaboration. "We
already have standards within IATA about the data structure that goes into the
bar code and boarding pass, and this could easily be reusable with the NFC.
"The main convenience would be for the passenger,"
Copart continued, citing NFC-enabled boarding passes. "It's not that easy
to retrieve the boarding pass bar code from mobile" devices today, as the code
sometimes must be obtained from a website which requires data roaming. With
NFC, a code moved to a mobile device automatically would be read and speed the
boarding process
"We see the NFC Forum as opening our eyes to the
possibilities," not only within the airline industry, but across other
transportation providers "as we work together to tackle intermodality,"
he added. "We're very excited about moving forward and hope you'll see
lots of pilots within our members in coming months."
This report originally
appeared in the February 2013 issue of Travel
Procurement.