White Papers

These materials may be freely downloaded and shared, provided that they are further distributed in unaltered form, with all copyright notices intact, and no charge is made for any such distribution.

NFC Forum White Papers

Smart Posters (PDF)
The goal of this White Paper, written by members of the NFC Forum Ecosystem Development Working Group, is to empower and encourage businesses and consumers to implement and use NFC Smart Posters. The extensively illustrated paper offers an easy guide to understanding what an NFC Smart Poster is, what is required to develop NFC Smart Posters, and how to avoid common obstacles when creating them. Through numerous use cases, the paper highlights ways in which NFC Smart Posters are already in use around the world, benefiting industry and consumers alike. Appendices include Frequently Asked Questions, a Glossary,
and a selection of other available resources.

NFC in Public Transport (PDF)
This white paper describes significant potential benefits for both travelers and transport operators. It provides an introduction to the potential uses, advantages, and setup of NFC technology in public transport programs. The paper covers a broad range of transport options, ranging from trains, buses, and subways to taxis, ferries, automobiles, and bicycle rentals. It also includes a variety of descriptive use cases and best practice examples of implementations.

Essentials for Successful NFC Mobile Ecosystems
NFC mobile services are an important emerging area for NFC technology with great potential for growth. The NFC Forum's strategy for accelerating the growth of this business area includes recognizing and describing what is needed to realize successful NFC mobile services, such as key technologies, typical use cases, and the structure of the overall ecosystem. In this white paper, the NFC Forum analyzes how to expand the existing contactless card ecosystem to enable NFC mobile services, identifies new functionalities in this ecosystem, and discusses additional functionalities.

Near Field Communication and the NFC Forum:  The Keys to Truly Interoperable Communications
This white paper highlights the capabilities of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology and its potential to transform our everyday lives. It reveals how NFC will transform standalone wireless networking resources into truly interoperable communications media for accessing public transportation and facilities, making retail payments, transferring data, discovering new information, and more. It further describes how the NFC Forum works to drive NFC standardization and encourage its adoption in the market. (PDF)

NFC Forum White Papers Developed with Other Organizations

NFC Reference Guide for Air Travel
The NFC Forum's Air Transport Task Force and IATA's Fast Travel Working Group collaborated extensively to develop this White Paper, which seeks to help the global air travel industry better understand and evaluate the potential benefits and costs, use cases, and implementation options associated with adoption of NFC Technology.

White Papers Contributed by NFC Forum Members

The following materials have been contributed by NFC Forum Members, and do not necessarily represent the official position of the NFC Forum or of any other NFC Forum Members. In some cases, they may describe specific implementation options believed by their authors to be compatible with the Forum's specifications and are presented here to help readers better understand the NFC Forum specification ecosystem. Except as otherwise noted, no commercial use may be made of these materials.

Members are encouraged to submit white papers about NFC and NFC implementations for posting here. Members should submit papers to the Marketing Communications Working Group Chair for consideration.

Elliptic Curve Certificates and Signatures for NFC Signature Records - RIM
This document discusses how elliptic curve cryptography can provide strong standards-based security for NFC tags using one-tenth the storage space of RSA signatures and certificates. The authors also present an NFC Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) architecture, scenarios for tag issuers, memory utilization and performance data for the various schemes specified in the NFC Forum Signature RTD.

Best Practices White Paper—NFC-F Device Detection - Sony
This document provides a guideline on the command sequence that should be used by a device in poll mode to discover and classify communication partners using NFC-F technology. The provided guidelines are especially relevant for NFC Forum Devices. The intended audiences are engineers and system designers. NFC Forum Members can download the Sony white paper from the Member website.

Introduction to NFC Forum Type Tags - NXP BV
This white paper provides an overview of NFC Forum Type Tags for product managers and technical staff. It covers the storage of application data, the format used, and how to map data to the format. It discusses the NFC Forum-defined Tag Types, lists use cases, and provides an overview of available products. It also includes a complete list of relevant documents for further study. (PDF)

Near Field Communication in the real world – part I:  Turning the NFC promise into profitable, everyday applications
This paper sets out Innovision's view of emerging NFC applications, technology and markets, and describes how the company's existing technology and development expertise is being adapted to help ensure successful take-up of the technology. (PDF)

Near Field Communication in the real world – part II:  Using the right NFC tag type for the right NFC application
This paper follows on from Part I of Innovision's white paper series and aims to help NFC product and service developers identify the suitability of the four NFC Forum-mandated tag types for various applications. (PDF)

Near Field Communication in the real world – part III:  Moving to System on Chip (SoC) integration
This paper outlines Innovision's business case for NFC integration and highlights the key considerations that need to be taken into account when implementing a custom NFC design. (PDF)

Dynamic management of multi-application secure elements
The SToLPaN project will detail the commercial and technical frameworks required to deliver third party applications securely into Secure Elements (SEs) in an NFC-enabled mobile handset, irrespective of the handset type or the support infrastructure. In this paper we describe the technical model for dynamic card content management of SEs placed in a mobile handset. All the rules, processes and interactions are also valid in case the same process should be realized for a personal or handheld computer equipped with SEs. (PDF)

Liberty, Equality, Mobility: NFC mobile phones to benefit regions
Forum des Services Mobiles Sans Contact has contributed this paper, which discusses the arrival of contactless NFC technology on mobile phones and the possibilities that are available as a reult: payment, access control, buying concert tickets, etc. (PDF)

White Papers from Other Standards Organizations and Non-Members

The following materials have been reproduced with the permission of other Standards Organizations and other non-members. They are for information only, and do not necessarily represent the official position of the NFC Forum or any of its Members. They are presented here to help readers better understand NFC in context with external efforts. Except as otherwise noted, no commercial use may be made of these materials.

GSMA Mobile Ticketing White Paper
Mobile ticketing or ‘M-Ticketing’ in which a virtual ticket is held on a mobile phone provides an opportunity to increase the efficiency of ticketing operations in the transport and entertainment sectors and to drive increased business by improving access to ticketed services.

National Retail Federation: Mobile Blueprint
To help retailers adapt to the new mobile technology, the National Retail Federation has launched its Mobile Retail Initiative to offer best practices and learning opportunities for retailers entering the mobile space.This Mobile Retail Initiative has produced a Mobile Blueprint to guide retailers in planning and implementing initial mobile applications, including customer marketing, payments and internal operations.

Mobey Forum NFC White Paper: Alternatives for Banks to offer Secure Mobile Payments
Mobey Forum discusses Secure Elements (SE) in financial institutions and elaborates on the question of how different Secure Elements (SEs) can enable Financial Institutions (FIs) to offer Mobile Financial Services (MFS) and hence empower the take-off of the MFS ecosystem. This white paper is targeted at business managers in Financial Institutions and strives to clarify the business implications of the various technical SE alternatives.

ECMA International NFC White Paper
Basic document from non-profit association ECMA International. Describes transfer of content, set up of communications with other protocols, protocols and unique features of NFC technology. Includes colorful use cases and other background information. (PDF)

Proximity Mobile Payments: Leveraging NFC and the Contactless Financial Payments Infrastructure.
White paper from non-profit association Smart Card Alliance. This white paper describes what is necessary to implement and deploy proximity mobile payment systems, discusses the relevant technical and business issues from the perspective of the various stakeholders (e.g., mobile operators, the financial industry, end-users, providers and vendors), and outlines the potential opportunities and barriers that may impact its market adoption.