WHAT IS NFC

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a wireless communication technology a bit like WiFi or Bluetooth. It allows the transfer of data between two devices, such as a mobile phone and an NFC tag.

With NFC technology, consumers can access digital content on their mobile devices with a single touch. At one end of the scale, interactivity could be kept to a simple launching of an App, or at the other end, a complex contactless transaction system.

WHAT IS NFC USED FOR?

You might use NFC to pass data from an NFC enabled mobile phone to another NFC enabled mobile phone, from a mobile phone to a payment terminal or from an NFC tag to a mobile phone.

NFC technology provides a logical solution for content providers, device manufacturers, access control systems, financial services organizations and more.

Ping Pong Innovation is a leading supplier of NFC enabled promotional products and NFC Business Cards. As experts in digital media manufacturing, NFC promotional products, creative packaging and NFC paper products, we are able to efficiently and cost effectively offer innovative NFC products such as:

CD Paks
Printed brochures
Stickers
Pens
Keyrings
Wristbands
Mouse mats
Drinks coasters
Business Cards

Plastic cards
Fridge magnets
Badges
Boxes
Letter Head Sheets
Envelopes
Postcards
Posters
Menus
And more!

Promotional products
Mobile phone task launcher App
Fusion into print and packaging
Marketing / advertising
Contactless payments

Modern day Smart phones that are NFC ready can be paired with NFC Tags that are programmed to automate commands. These instructions that are encoded on to the NFC tag itself can offer many interactions such as:

1. Entering a Business Card (vCard) or Contact sharing

Digital / online address books and contact storing is saving people money on business cards and also making contact management more efficient and convenient. You can code the NFC tag with your (or any other) contact details and as soon as the NFC is tapped, the information / details will be imported to the users phone. This will be a fantastic experience if you use our App, controling all about your contact lists, making an effective proffesional networking, and creating full customized virtual cards with your own identity.

2. Website / URL Launching

A common and successful use for NFC is to encode a URL onto a tag to allow users to visit a website. Take them to a page to promote a product or service or generate awareness of a promotion. URL launching is a popular NFC use for smart posters, smart menus, smart postcards, etc.

3. Connecting to Social Media

If you have the desire to impulse your social networking, and increase your "Friends" or "Likes", linking NFC promotions to your Social Media sites is a good way to achieve this. You can place tags with any of your social media logos at your location and make it convenient and engaging for your people to update their status. This is an efficient and effective form of engagement, just quick and direct updates.

4. Linking to online videos

You can take interested people to your videos on your website or YouTube / Vimeo. A perfect way to endorse your video in a memorable and engaging way.

5. Sending SMS Text messages

When someone tapping your NFC tag, it is possible for people to have an SMS message auto created so they can send you a specific message at a specific time. You can pre-program the NFC tag with any recipient mobile number and with a pre-written text to be sent to that number. You could also use this to have people send you a call-back request if they are interested in your product or service.

6. Creating a email ready for sending

If you need your prospect to send you a quick email, NFC tagging allows this functionality in a effective way. If you want to make it easy for someone to subscribe to your newsletter or to your blog – this offers a powerful way to achieve this. If you are looking for feedback on an event or on a product, then this is the solution you need. You can pre-fill the email address, the subject line and you can even set a predefined email text.

7. Executing a phone call

When tapping your Smart Phone on the NFC tag, you could have the phone automatically dial a pre-determined number. No need to enter the number into the phone dialer. Simply tap the tag and hit CALL.

8. Creating a Calendar entry (vCalendar)

If you are promoting an event with specific date and you want people to remember that event, it is possible to encode the details of the event onto the tag and when tapped, the Smart Phone will have a calendar entry created. Similarly, if you need to remind people of a deadline or an important date or memo, use this solution for one-time events or even reoccurring events.

WHAT ARE THE NFC USES FOR PROMOTIONAL ACTIVITY?

Security and access control
Product identification
Location identification
Trade shows and events

WHAT IS NFC TAG

An NFC tag is tiny controller chip semiconductor. It does have a wire antenna attached so it is able to send it’s data wirelessly. The instruction to do what it does is pre-programmed and stored on this tiny little IC (Integrated Circuit) chip. As there are no batteries it receives it’s power just by being in close proximity to the Smart phone.

Different NFC chips have different memory configurations and also memory sizes. This limits how much information can be held on different chips but it also affects how the chip can be locked and other very important factors.

NFC Tags can be produced and supplied as stickers, branded wristbands, printed fobs, business cards and in many other products.

WHAT INFORMATION CAN YOU STORE

There's a whole set of different data types you can store on an NFC tag. The actual amount of data varies depending on the type of NFC tag used - different tags have different memory capacities.

Establishing the chip you need requires the selecting the chip with enough usable memory for the data you need to encode. The recommended chip from most NFC suppliers is the NTAG203. The majority of our products use NTAG203 and NTAG216 (with more capacity)

WHAT NFC CHIP

There's a whole set of different data types you can store on an NFC tag. The actual amount of data varies depending on the type of NFC tag used - different tags have different memory capacities.

Establishing the chip you need requires the next step is to select the chip with enough usable memory for the data you need to encode. The recommended chip from most NFC suppliers is the NTAG203. This is a common chip to give you all solution. In the next table you can look the memory used in some examples:

HOW CAN I ENCODE NFC PRODUCTS

Encoding on a small scale is easy to do from your NFC enabled mobile phone. We will finish our Ping Pong App this year for you, totally free. You can download it for Android, which can get you encoding in minutes. For larger scale encoding, we offer a reliable and timely encoding service to match the requirements of your project. So, if you get our App you'll receive two benefits: Encode your products, and live the best experience in professional networking with our NFC Business Cards.

DOES YOUR PHONE HAVE NFC

Actually all of the top ten manufacturers sell NFC phones.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the first Apple iPhone mobile phones with NFC technology built in. However, while you can use NFC in the iPhone to make payments, you can't currently use it to read NFC Tags. There's also no current access for developers to the NFC technology either. As with all things Apple, there's plenty of debate about whether Apple will open up access to the NFC controller within the iPhone or indeed whether the iPhone 6 is even capable of reading NFC tags at all (some argue that the antenna within the iPhone wouldn't generate enough power within the tag). We expect Apple to open access to the NFC controller later in 2016 and with luck the iPhone would have the ability to read NFC tags.

There is another more common problem that we do list here which is that Windows phones require that NFC tags with an MFIARE Ultralight® chip are formatted ('NDEF formatted') before they can be encoded by the phone.

Please check this link, in order to know all mobiles with NFC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFC-enabled_mobile_devices

HOS IS THE NFC ANTENNA

NFC Tags work by an active device (usually a mobile phone) generating a magnetic field which induces an electric current in the antenna of the passive device (the NFC Tag) which powers up the NFC Chip. The NFC Tag then creates a further magnetic field which can in return be read by the active device (the phone) allowing data to be transferred.

The antenna is very carefully designed to resonate at the desired frequency of 13.56Mhz and ensure that this happens as efficiently and as effectively as possible.

The functionality of the antenna is not affected by it’s physical construction such as its thickness, which is why the ‘antennas’ within NFC tags can be very thin.

The weak point of an NFC tag is the bond – the connection point that joins the antenna and the tiny chip. His bond is likely to break if handled or bent too much.

The antenna on an NFC Tag (sticker/inlay) is made of etched aluminium or occasionally copper.

Copper is more expensive to use than aluminimum but performs slightly better so is only used in the smallest of NFC tags where getting that extra bit of scan distance is important.