Near-field communications (NFC) has garnered a lot of attention for its ability to enable mobile transactions ranging from payments to healthcare monitoring. To promote this technology, the NFC Forum has launched a number of special-interest groups (SIGs). They will bring together leaders in consumer electronics, healthcare, payment, retail, and transportation. Those individuals will collaborate on NFC solution implementation, interoperability, best practices, and future requirements.
The SIGs will educate their respective markets on use cases, implementation issues, and lessons learned. To drive new or modified technical work, they will assemble business requirements. The special-interest groups also will explore ways to speed or smooth the certification of NFC-enabled devices. Each SIG is tasked with establishing and managing liaisons with other groups to further collaborative efforts. They will create regional programs as needed.
By nurturing the interaction of NFC stakeholders in key vertical markets, use cases, and technology segments through these SIGs, the NFC Forum hopes to take a more active role in driving the development, deployment, and adoption of NFC solutions. The five initial SIG Working Groups will report to a new SIG Committee, which reports to the NFC Forum Board. Working through that committee, NFC Forum members will have the opportunity to recommend the formation of additional SIGs and propose new work items. An NFC Forum webcast launching the new SIGs can be viewed on the organization’s website.