| A form of very short range wireless communications is needed for many applications. NFC is a set of protocols that enable two devices to establish communication by bringing them within 4 cm of each other. It is distinct from other wireless technologies: |
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- Bluetooth: Bluetooth has been designed to transfer data over much greater distances, whereas NFC is designed to be close proximity.
- Wi-Fi/IEEE 802.11: Wi-Fi is designed for local area networks, and is not a short range peer to peer technology.
- RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification): RFID is a much broader technology, whereas NFC is a specific case which is defined by standards enabling it to be interoperable.
Each full NFC device can work in three modes:
- NFC card emulation, which enables NFC-enabled devices to act like smart cards, allowing users to perform transactions like payment
- NFC reader/writer, which enables NFC-enabled devices to read information stored on inexpensive NFC tags embedded in labels
- NFC peer-to-peer, which enables two NFC-enabled devices to communicate with each other to exchange information