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How NFC works, and what you can do with it

NFC is a short-range radio link that works over a few centimetres and needs no battery in the thing being read. That single property explains almost everything about it: why a tag costs a few cents, why it fails on metal, and why nobody uses it to transfer a video.

Start here

Two pages cover the ground most people arrive looking for.

  • What is NFC and how does it work?

    The physical principle, the operating modes, the standards that define them, and the limits that follow from all three.

    Section overview

  • NFC vs RFID vs Bluetooth

    Three wireless technologies that get confused constantly. Where each one is genuinely the right answer, and where it is not.

    Guide

What this site covers

Twelve sections, all online. Each one lists every guide it contains.

  • Understanding NFC

    Inductive coupling, the 13.56 MHz carrier, the ISO and NFC Forum standards, and how NFC differs from the technologies it gets mistaken for.

    Published

  • NFC tags and cards

    Choosing hardware before you buy it: chip families and their memory, antenna size against read distance, and which substrate survives being stuck to a wall.

    Published

  • Writing NFC tags

    What NDEF is, which record type suits which job, what formatting really does to a blank tag, and when locking a tag is a decision you cannot take back.

    Published

  • NFC on smartphones

    What Android and iOS each allow, where the antenna sits, what background reading does and does not cover, and why the same tag behaves differently on two phones.

    Published

  • NFC automation

    Wi-Fi credentials, contact sharing, home automation triggers, and the routines people actually keep using after the first week.

    Published

  • NFC for business

    Digital business cards, point of sale displays, event badges, access control and asset tracking, with the deployment constraints that come with each.

    Published

  • NFC security and privacy

    What cloning a tag does and does not mean, what signing an NDEF record buys you, and which widely repeated claims about NFC payment do not hold.

    Published

  • NFC troubleshooting

    Symptom first: nothing happens on tap, the tag reads on one phone only, the read distance collapsed, the tag is locked and you did not mean to lock it.

    Published

  • NFC for developers

    Reading, writing and emulating from your own code: what Android, iOS, the browser and USB readers each expose, what they make you declare, and how code fails when a tag leaves the field.

    Published

  • NFC in products

    Putting a tag in what you manufacture: the digital product passport European law now requires, which carrier it allows, where the tag survives inside a product, and what a tap is worth after the sale.

    Published

  • NFC by industry

    The same tag in a different trade: a hotel room, a restaurant table, a museum label, a monument, a library book, an inspection round, a hospital ward. Each one changes what the tag survives and what it may hold.

    Published

  • The phone as a card

    The phone in the place of the plastic: which card pays at a terminal, how a fare is collected, what a key in a wallet can open, what an identity app proves, and what survives a change of phone.

    Published