Near Field Communication and the Future of Smart Shopping

Of the various technologies that are set to transform the fabric of everyday life as we begin to approach the new decade, one which will have the most immediate and wide-ranging effects is Near Field Communications (NFC). The market for this technology—a set of communication protocols that connects two electronic devices, one of them usually a portable device such as a smartphone—is expected to reach $24 billion by the year 2020. The applications for NFC reach across a wide variety of industries: the monitoring of healthcare systems, the connection of separate energy systems, user authentication and access control for motor vehicles and security systems, and tech upgrades for electronics. However, the industry currently making the most of NFC, and the one most likely to see itself further altered over the course of the next few years, is retail. The ways in which the retail sector has already begun to use NFC to connect with consumers and streamline the modern shopping experience gives us a clear vision of what we can expect things to look like in the coming years, and while there is much reason to look forward to the optimization that it will bring about, there are also concerns over matters of privacy and personal space that come along with it.

Already, smartphones are equipped with NFC technology that enables them to quickly be scanned by credit card machines for the fastest mode of payment currently available. But even that metric is set to move, with the opening of Amazon Go’s first brick-and-mortar store, which would use NFC (alongside deep learning and digital tagging) to dispense with the checkout line altogether, allowing for customers to merely grab and bag their items and exit the store, with the charges being applied automatically to their Amazon accounts. If Amazon’s beta testing proves fruitful, we can expect more and more automated stores to spring up throughout the country over the course of the next decade, despite concerns about the effect this could have on service industry jobs.

Of course, such applications do not affect only those within the service industry. Consumers are also set to discover that their experience will be altered by this technology, whether they desire it to be or not.

When it comes to the integration of near field communication technology into everyday life, mobile/contactless payment has received the lion share of the coverage so far, with various credit card and smartphone companies advertising the time-saving benefits of the application. But there is another use for the tech within the retail sector, one that, while on the surface benefitting customers, is mostly a boon to retailers and advertisers. That is the use of bots that send messages to people about specific brands, stores, merchandise, and deals within their immediate vicinity. This application of NFC has the ability to connect retailers and customers in a way never before thought possible. But it also has the potential to alienate them.

While certain, more limited applications of this technology—such as the At Your Service Chatbot that Irvine’s Fashion Island recently rolled out to serve as a digital concierge—seem less intrusive, other uses of proximity marketing (which will become more and more prevalent) may yet make the in-store shopping experience indistinguishable from online shopping, where the immediacy of the experience is offset by a deluge of advertisements, often aimed specifically at you and your interests thanks to data mining.

The public at large doesn’t seem too concerned over the questions of privacy this entails, and as the market for NFC continues to expand alongside the technology, they will likely make the trade-off favor of a more streamlined shopping experience, as they have with e-commerce.

It seems appropriate that as the Internet of Things continues to connect everything around us, the first part of everyday life that will be transformed is the retail industry: it is, after all, consumerism in its purest form. The goal of marketers, manufacturers, and retailers alike is to form a connection between the consumer and their product, and now, thanks to near field communication, the smart shopping revolution is set to do just that, regardless of how the latter party feels about it.