NFC Forum Launches Proof-of-Concept NFC Digital Product Passport Mobile Reader

NFC Forum, the leading standards body for Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, launched a Proof-of-Concept Mobile Reader application for Android and iOS that can read on-product NFC Digital Product Passport (NDPP) data. The Proof-of-Concept was one of a wide variety of demonstrations of DPP-enabled products hosted by the Forum at its recent Vision NFC event in Nice, France.

Engineers also presented work-in-progress specifications that will define additional standards to process on-product DPPs; enable offline access to dynamic DPP data stored by the data carrier; provide additional anti-tampering features; and deliver a security mechanism to improve the DPP user experience. This extensive overview presented the industry with tangible proof of how a Digital Product Passport (DPP) ecosystem using NFC Forum technologies as a data carrier could look in-practice, both today and in the years to come.

Developed by the NFC Forum, the NDPP Reader application for Android and iOS is an example of how on-device DPP data can be stored on and retrieved from an NFC-enabled product or tag currently available on the market. The NFC Forum defined a flexible architecture that allows a tag to store more than one NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) record. In doing so, this allows DPP data and the standard hyperlink cloud-based online DPP data record to be stored on the device, the latter being more often used to activate consumer engagement applications.

NFC Forum-based tags already in products, which are proven, secure, convenient and trusted, can therefore have additional NDEF records added to them for DPP purposes, without limiting their functionality for other uses. Furthermore, the NFC Forum NDPP Reader application can detect if anyone has tampered with DPP cloud-based data, alerting users to discrepancies in DPP data that signify the original information added by the manufacturer has been altered. The Forum is working to ensure this functionality is available for both Android and iOS versions of the NDPP Reader application, with plans to add a cloud-to-product validation feature in the near future.