MintID Uses NFC To Provide Gold And Silver Bullion Products A Digital Identity

NFC Forum Product Showcase

New, exciting and innovative products using NFC can be found everywhere around the globe.  We collect some of the best examples and display them on the NFC Forum Product Showcase.  If you haven’t visited the NFC Forum Product Showcase page in a while – or ever – we encourage you to check it out and see some of the really cool ways NFC is being used in a wide variety of products and solutions.

All the NFC-enabled products on the NFC Forum Product Showcase are great but every so often we get a product submission that really sparks our curiosity.  MintID falls squarely in that category as it involves gold, anti-counterfeiting, authentication and, of course, NFC.  Their product really shows the strength and flexibility of NFC technology.  When we reached out to Corey Maita, founder of MintID to ask him some questions he informed us that he worked closely with NFC Forum member Identiv to develop the MintID solution!

According to Maita, the problem MintID uses NFC to solve is one that has plagued the precious metals investment industry since probably before recorded history.  How does an investor really know the gold coin or silver ingot they are buying or already own is genuine?  There are physical ways of testing the metals but to be really sure of an investment MintID gives each gold or silver product a digital identity.  It does this using the unique capabilities of NFC.

“Our vision is to give every physical bullion investment product a digital identity,” said Maita.  “Unlike serial numbers, UPC codes, QR codes or barcodes MintID chips cannot be copied or cloned. MintID only uses locked encrypted microchips that link physical bullion products to their cloud based digital records.”

See All The NFC-enabled Products On The NFC Forum Product Showcase

The MintID solution outfits each bullion product with a custom-designed NFC chip that has a unique encrypted and tamper-proof digital certificate.  A mobile app authenticates and guarantees the bullion is genuine by the ISO: 9001 facility that minted it.

“Each MintID NFC chip contains government-grade cryptography,” explains Stephane Ardiley, director product management. “When scanned, the chip is validated through a cloud service guaranteeing the authenticity of the gold or silver product. To address the challenges of RFID in metallic environments, Identiv worked closely with MintID to develop a series of tags that deliver utmost performance when read by a variety of iOS and Android mobile devices.”

MintID is a great addition to the NFC Forum Product Showcase.  Real-time authentication, tamper detection and supply chain traceability are a few of the benefits enabled by NFC for the MintID solution.  To find more unique, innovative products using NFC check out the NFC Forum Product Showcase or submit your own product:  /nfc-product-showcase/