NFC Forum’s Tag Certification Initiative for Global Interoperability of NFC Tag Solutions and Mobile Phones to establish consistent and improved user experience 22. November 2016

The NFC Forum has announced a Tag Certification Program which will give companies involved in products and services that use NFC tags a means to establish a consistent and predictable experience when communicating with NFC-enabled mobile devices across all applications and environments. NFC tags that will pass the required upcoming conformance standard of the NFC Forum will be able to provide global interoperability with NFC-enabled mobile devices.

The Tag Certification Program applies to all tag types specified by the NFC Forum (Types 1/2/3/4/5), which are considered the most broadly supported tags in the industry. The new tag certification initiative will be part of the established NFC Forum Certification Program, with the aim to shorten the NFC product adoption process, lower adoption costs and make product implementations easier.

Tags that are incorporating for instance only a part of the ISO/IEC 14443 standard and rely upon a Tag-Talks-First implementation will be excluded from the NFC Forum Tag Certification Program. Tag-Talks-First implementations do not cater for a seamless and interoperable eco-system of various tag and reader types.

This new compliance initiative is being spearheaded by the NFC Forum’s Internet of Things Special Interest Group (IoT SIG) and Compliance Committee. The IoT SIG is being chaired by Apple, and vice-chaired by NXP Semiconductors, the Compliance Committee is chaired by NXP Semiconductors.

Read the full announcement of the NFC Forum here.