Ask HN: What are the use cases for NFC outside of payments

One huge thing you missed is device pairing. Nokia already uses NFC to pair their wireless accessories (headsets, speakers, etc). With wireless charging, it makes docks obsolete http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upo-e692lRg

All the use cases for swiping are also use cases for NFC, but obviously the added convenience of NFC will probably encourage adoption in scenarios where swiping would have been too much.

In San Francisco, PayByPhone has put stickers on many (all?) of the parking meters, enabling you to pay for your parking via their mobile app. In addition to a unique number, the stickers are also NFC-capable, so presumably an NFC phone owner can wave a phone against it to input the meter ID in the app.

(I use an iPhone, so this is speculation on my part.)

Secure sign on. NFC reader attached to your PC, touch and sign in. Already possible on Linux.

Seems like in the building seurity case, that could be a huge afffordable improvement over RFID tags; I.e. Tap and get a key that you respond to wth a crypto function vs. RFID where any idiot can scan and replicate your tag.

I have a galaxy nexus and I love the idea behind NFC. Right now it feels like a gimmick because there really aren't places that take google wallet where I normally shop, and not many friends have NFC enabled devices.

That being said, I am really excited for NFC to grow.

Someone should kickstart a project that is a usb NFC phone sync tool. I think HP just announced a computer with a feature similar (the spectre?).

I had an occasion to participate in project of a museum app which allowed people to use NFC-enabled phones as kind of interactive guides. There were NFC tags placed beside artworks and visitors with app installed on their phone could bring their device close to the tag and phone would launch the app to show more detailed informations about given exhibit. All data could be downloaded before going to the museum or during visit (there was free wi-fi inside museum building). It was launched in National Museum in Kraków and as far as I know worked quite well.

I've also heard of ideas like configuring devices over NFC, e.g. touch a tag with your phone and it will be configured to use local wi-fi network. You can use NFC in similar manner to transfer a link to a website, which I believe would be much more convenient that scanning QR code.

At a hackathon we developed an NFC app that can scan food packaging and give you the instructions and a kitchen timer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ92FMl1qcE (I know, its blurry...)

After hacking with it, I have to say it is much more reliable than QR code scanning / barcode scanning. No problems with low light, shaking device etc. Replacing QR codes is probably not a very exciting use case, but I could see it happening.

Authentication, synchronization, ticketing, etc. I'd think something like requiring you to unlock your NFC device in order to "swipe" in would be pretty nifty 2-factor auth.

I'd suggest taking a look at the wikipedia page, it has a list of potential uses.

Why aren't we seeing adoption yet? Quite simply, percentage of devices that support it are too low in contrast to the effort required to get any sort of deployment - a chicken and egg problem.

Adding support for QR codes requires some software (it's out there, and free usually) and a functioning camera with good enough resolution (again, almost omnipresent). NFC brings with it another chipset, another antenna and a chassis designed to have that antenna not mess with the others. If you want to do proper crypto with it, that's a rewiring of how you connect the SIM to your baseband to facilitate NFC-WI - I hope you're getting the picture here.

Geee is right about pairing being the other advantage asides from what I think are gimmicks like "bonking" to check into Foursquare. Realistically there is only a few ways to gain greater adoption: payments actually being deployed en-masse, or the incorporation of NFC chipsets into existing baseband modems.

Location/presence. It gives a reasonably strong indication that your device was probably in a location at that time (whether GPS was present, enabled, shared, etc. or not).

Replacing physical keys. You could use NFC to start your car or open your home's front door without a key.

Phone automation: http://launcher.tagstand.com/

There are some arcade games in Japan that use an NFC card to keep track of player data. For example, Mahjong Fight Club uses one to allow for elaborate player rankings and detailed stat tracking.

We use the lockitron app to let houseguests in (and we have many cause of AirBNB). Since you can give a key to someone with a simple email, it eliminates the hassle of arranging a time to meet for key exchange. https://lockitron.com/

Both Google and Nokia have demoed using NFC to switch audio being played on a mobile device to audio being played over another device. Setting up simple transfers like that makes sense, although it obviously requires another smart device or dumb device + alt streaming protocol.

You could use NFC to exchange data. You could, for example, perform a hip bump to add somebody to your Tweetface circle; or grind on somebody to trade phone numbers; or leave a tip by rubbing somebody's pants pocket... all without directly manipulating phones!

(I imagine this'd be increasingly relevant as the screens on these things get bigger and bigger and it becomes difficult even to remove your phone from your pocket.)

Personally I think there are many uses for NFC. The way I see it, NFC is a way to enable short range communication with physical objects in the real world that are NFC enabled as well. I speculate that a NFC mobile device can be used as your key to open NFC enabled secure locations and objects (e.g. car keys, office keys, house keys, safe locks). Another usage I speculate is with pet's and pet tags. If a pet is lost you could scan the pet or a tag and it will tell an individual who own's the pet and the pets name.

Generally speaking, you could just add it as another layer of security for proximity-based interaction as a three-factor authentication of sorts.

For instance, people can't open X without (1) a key/password, (2) a OTP password, and (3) an NFC device. It seems like a good way to add a proximity factor to authentication.

It doesn't have to replace something; it can also augment them. Especially when it's an automated process, not a manual one.

I see NFC as a way to essentially enable interactions between physical objects

Strong (hardware PKI based) authentication for mobile banking (user and transaction auth by touching phone to bank card).

Found this an interesting point on speed from london's underground www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/07/london-underground-nfcs-just-too-slow/

I had an idea where you could carry a sort of virtual business card around with you. Meet somebody? Tap your phone to theirs and they get a business card. When they get home they tap it to a computer and they get a big resume with links to your github or art repos or online examples of your work. It'd be really cool for networking events or job fairs and the like.

I use Android Beam fairly regularly. Sharing contact info, transferring files, etc. is all delightfully easy now.

I hardly ever use NFC to interact with anything other than other devices, but I suppose that's because those other things aren't very prominent in the U.S. yet.

I can see this technology simplifying in person installation for small businesses. As in I walk into my local coffee shop and can install a payment app like Square with a tap or instead of handing me a leaflet to install the app at my local bank, let me do it instantly. I'm sure this would increase installs dramatically, especially at events or at museums.

Maybe to connect to the WiFi network or checkin on Foursquare in a cafe. In the British Airways lounge the other day I heard a lot of people going up to the desk asking which network it was, etc. This would fix a lot of the problems. Some people were fumbling to work out how to connect on their phone.

Companies like Tagstand allow any company to implement this instantly. I can see loyalty programmes being made using this tech.