These days, the most common thing that NFC is used for is contactless payment. There are a lot of use cases for NFC, but here are some of the most common you'll see. Meanwhile, RFID works from a distance of up to 12 m/40 ft. NFC's higher frequency means that, while it can transfer data much faster than RFID, it only works from a distance of about 4 cm/1.6 in or less. NFC is a newer, high-frequency version of RFID, and also involves both tags and readers. In this case, when the reader receives a signal back from the tag on your item, it sounds an alarm. That electricity activates the chip inside the tag, and it sends a signal with the information stored on the chip back to the reader. Most RFID tags are unpowered, so when the antenna in the tag picks up radio waves from the reader, it generates a small amount of electricity. So what happens if you try to leave a store and there's still a tag on the item you bought? They're constantly transmitting radio waves and listening for a response. If you've ever seen those big devices on either side of a store entrance, those are just big RFID readers. Highway toll payment devices and those plastic things on clothes and other expensive items in stores are some common examples of RFID tags. These tags all include an antenna and a tiny chip, and can come in many shapes and sizes.

Radio-frequency identification, or RFID, is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves from a reader to track specific tags. NFC is a subset of another technology called RFID, so let's dig a bit into that before circling back to NFC. It is a standard for devices to communicate with each other wirelessly from a very close distance.

In this article we'll go over what NFC is, what it's used for, some creative ways to use NFC, and more. While the use of NFC for things like contactless payments was growing steadily, it exploded early this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic. You've probably seen it in your phone settings, or heard about it online.

Use of nfc tags