How To Use NFC on Android? How does it work?
How To Use NFC on Android? Example with Blackview Phone
Have you ever paid with your smartphone at Starbucks or a convenience store? If so, you’ve already used NFC technology.
In recent years, NFC mobile payments have surged in popularity. Despite its widespread use in daily transactions, many people still don’t fully understand what it is or how it functions.
Grasping how NFC works is crucial—it’s a technology that could further reshape our lives in numerous ways. So, here’s a breakdown of NFC to prepare you for the future of contactless innovation.
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What is NFC?
NFC is the acronym of near-field communication. It is a technology that allows two devices to communicate with each other wirelessly from a very close distance. NFC evolved from another technology called RFID. So let’s talk about RFID first before digging deep into NFC.
What is RFID and How it is related to NFC?
RFID stands for Radio-frequency identification. RFID refers to a technology that uses radio waves from a reader to track specific tags.
A typical example of this is the plastic tags attached to clothing or other high-value items in stores. These are among the most common uses of RFID technology. If you’ve noticed the large detectors at mall entrances, you’ve already seen how RFID systems operate in action.
This equipment, referred to as a reader, monitors RFID tags. If an RFID tag passes near the reader, its antenna captures the reader's radio waves, powering up the tag and enabling it to send a return signal to the reader, which then sounds an alarm.
If you understand what RFID is, then it is not difficult for you to know NFC, as it is a high-frequency version of RFID. But NFC works much faster from a closer distance than RFID.
Types of NFC Devices
A NFC device can be passive or active. Passive NFC devices, such as a NFC tag, contain information that other devices can read but do not read any information itself.
Devices with active NFC capabilities, such as smartphones, can switch between active (transmitting) and passive (receiving) states to send and receive data. This allows them to read information from NFC tags or exchange data with other supported phones.
How Does NFC Technology Work in a Smartphone?
Most smartphones are built with a NFC chip, which makes the smart device both a NFC reader and a NFC tag. This enables NFC technology to work in three modes in a smartphone.
1. Card Emulation Mode
As its name implies, in this mode, a smartphone acts like a smart contactless chip; it sends information to a contactless reader in a store, e.g. a payment terminal. So your digital wallet pops up and asks you to confirm payment. The common NFC apps are Android Pay, Samsung Pay or Apple Pay.
2. Reader Mode
In this case, a smartphone behaves like a contactless chip reader and the chip is a NFC tag. You can scan a NFC tag to enjoy seamless user experiences across channels from offline to mobile. For instance, if you are tired of telling Wi-Fi passwords to your customers in your cafe, you can skip the hassle with a NFC tag on each table.
3. Peer-to-peer Mode
This mode is mainly about data sharing between Android devices in close proximity. When two Android smart phones get in range, applications like Android Beam or Huawei Beam will present a prompt asking if you want to transfer content like music, documents, photos or videos to the other Android device.
How to Enable NFC on Your Android Device
To start using NFC, you’ll need to enable it first. Follow these steps:
1. Open the Settings app on your Android device.
2. Navigate to Connected devices or Wireless & networks.
3. Tap on Connection preferences or a similar option.
4. Toggle the NFC switch to turn it on.
Some devices may also require you to enable Android Beam for file transfers.
How to use NFC for Mobile Payment with Blackview Smartphones?
In the guide, we will learn how to use Google Pay with Blackview A100:
Activate NFC on A100
How to Set up Google Pay
How to add a debit or credit card
How to Use Google Pay in a Store?
When you finish all the steps above, you can now try to pay with A100 in a store. But before that, you should confirm with the cashier that the terminal actually does support Google Pay. To do so, follow steps below:
Of course, NFC can be applied to many other situations. For example, you can use NFC to launch apps depending on your location, instantly connect to a Wi-Fi network, dim the phone screen at bedtime, turn off notifications, or set alarms and timers and more. After hearing all this, you must be eager to experiment with NFC technology yourself. Go find out whether there are other ways to use NFC and share them with us on Facebook.
Which Smartphone is NFC-equipped?
NFC-supported devices are growing in number and here is a list of NFC-equipped smartphones from NFC World. However, that’s not all. We have listed all the NFC phones of Blackview which launched before Dec. 2021 below:
If your device runs on Android 4.4 or later, you should be able to pay with Google Pay. Samsung's devices have another option——Samsung Pay. For content exchange, Android smartphones based on 4.4 to 9.0 have Android Beam to share digital data with others. (However, Android Beam has been discontinued in 2019.)
Apple hasn't equipped its iOS devices with NFC for a long time until the latest iPhone 12, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max and 12 Mini which allow NFC tags through the Launch Center Pro app. Version 3 of the app includes NFC triggers for iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max for actions via custom NFC stickers.
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