Ever wondered what happens in the background when you say my card has a“Tap & Pay” feature? 

It’s because of a technology called NFC or Near Field Communication.

NFC or Near Field Communication is a contactless communication technology based on a radio frequency (RF) field using a base frequency of 13.56 MHz NFC technology is perfectly designed to exchange data between two devices through a simple touch gesture. 

NFC is a form of communication between two devices, which makes transferring data more secure, convenient, and easy.

How does it work?

NFC works just like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, NFC works on the principle of sending information over radio waves. With the introduction of NFC, a user can share data, make payment without any manual hassle has turned out to be more important than any other technology in recent times, particularly in terms of mobile payments with simple operation. 

• With the mobile based payment app on your phone, you will just need to Tap the phone on the POS machine and a connection will be established utilising the NFC feature which is secured with password authentication or scanning your finger which makes it more secure. 
• Further, the transaction is then approved by a different chip called the SE (secure element), which transfers the transaction for approval back to the NFC modem. 

Currently, in India NFC-embedded cards are in the market with the imposed limits on the transaction sizes that it can process for NFC based card transactions.

With the introduction of NFC compatible smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy Series, Google’s Nexus Series, and the iPhone in India we are stepping into a more cashless payment’s era. 

Is NFC Payments secure or not?

Are NFC payments secure or not? Most of you were wondering the same. However, the answer is NFC based payments are secure and safe. 

 For e.g A consumer who is interested in making payment via NFC based mobile application, due to the imposed limits on the transaction size on consumers cards the data cannot be stored in any of businesses NFC based terminals. In Addition to this, for instance, if a business’s NFC enabled terminal had been compromised but still the customer’s card details cannot be accessed. Likewise, tokenization makes NFC based payments so secure that there’s no decipherable information to steal from NFC terminal.

With the introduction of a process called tokenization, both NFC enabled merchants and the customers can feel reassured that contactless payments will provide end to end data security. For customers, card numbers are never stored in the application or anywhere in the operating system but in fact they are replaced with “token”. Furthermore, two-factor authentication like Face ID, passcode or touch ID within our smartphones enable a second layer of encryption and makes it more secure and safe for payments. On the merchant side NFC terminals and readers also use tokenization technology to encrypt sensitive information.

Contactless payments and its evolution in India

India’s journey towards a cashless economy can be judged by the impact of demonetization (2016) and COVID-19. Back in 2016, the government announced demonetization to convert India from cash-based economy to cashless economy. India had shown a gradual progress with the digitisation followed by ATM, credit and debit card, digital wallet, prepaid cards, recharge vouchers etc. payment solution helped India to build a cashless economy.

On 24 May 2021 – NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) partnered with Turkey’s global payment solutions company PayCore as one of the certified partners for RuPay SoftPOS to drive cashless payments across the country. RuPay SoftPOS allows retailers to easily accept payments from contactless cards, mobile wallets, and wearables using only their phones. With the usage of RuPay SoftPOS, millions of merchants can now transform their NFC smartphones into POS machines to accept contactless payments. 

Under this association, NPCI mentioned that they have authorised the SoftPOS solution developed by PayCOre for RuPay. This solution can be integrated into bank or aggregator acquiring systems to enable acquiring of RuPay using mobile phones enabled with NFC capability. 

“With PayCore’s SoftPOS solution, which enables smartphones and tablets to be used as POS terminals without any additional devices, investment costs required by banks to reach out to over 63 million micro-, small-and medium-sized businesses will significantly reduce, said Ali Kancha, chief executive of PayCore”.

According to Nalin Bansal, “chief of fintech’s, corporates and new initiative at NPCI, the launch of RuPay SoftPOS is aimed at supporting small merchants which form the backbone of our Indian Economy and is one of many in the series of launches starting with its open-loop transit program.”

With the introduction of eye-popping innovations and technologies like UPI (scan & pay), FASTags, NFC payments, interoperability etc it certainly holds a promising future in India. In addition to these NPCI initiatives to introduce SoftPOS to support small merchants and provide one step towards a cashless economy. Recently, Google Pay is offering the NFC feature for android phones that support NFC to make payments at NFC based terminals. 

Apart from the list of Pros and Cons of NFC as a technology in the payment sector. One of the major challenges I came across is the  transaction limit of Rs 5000 set by RBI for NFC payments. However,  in the future it will prove to be a big step towards a cashless economy where NFC based terminals or POS will provide seamless payment experience to the end user and the receiver.