NFC and the DPP: A Vision for the Future of Sustainability

For the past year NFC Forum has been publicly and actively discussing, engaging and promoting the role that Near Field Communication (NFC) technology can play in supporting the circular economy as a data carrier for the Digital Product Passport (DPP).

This month in Nice, France, NFC Forum consolidated all these elements into one event – Vision NFC – to showcase its learnings, activities and, vitally, its vision for an open, interoperable and secure NFC DPP (NDPP) standard.

Here’s our key takeaways:

1. European Sustainability Standards and Regulation are developing at an Olympic pace.

The pressure is on. DPP is just one of the many sustainability initiatives coming to market in Europe, which will become enforceable through regulation in a matter of years. A resulting market fact is simple; if products don’t conform to these regulations, they will be taken off the market.

Clearly the impact is far reaching. The DPP will touch many ecosystems and players from the point when a product is manufactured to its entry into the market through to the moment it is recycled or reaches its end-of-life.

The regulation also presents an opportunity to re-shape consumer purchasing habits and drive more sustainable behaviors. It can offer customers total transparency on the production and ethical manufacturing of a product, with some viewing the DPP as a ‘responsible product passport’.

2. The DPP is not just a system ‘add on’.

The scope is complex and the DPP has tough demands. Not only does it need to be market and sector agnostic, but it must also be future fit and future proof. It is vital to ensure the whole system is sustainable for decades, so that DPP information can be accessed throughout a product’s lifecycle, even if the original manufacturer goes out of business. This means the DPP must be able to accommodate new innovations and evolutions, while not discriminating against older products.

In this way, the DPP will require the implementation of new IT architectures that can manage the full lifecycle of a product, which is not an easy ask. For example, beyond the data carrier identifier, the system must include data storage; trust, security and sovereignty; data exchanges; IT services / apps; as well as defining workflow and data processes.

A key conversation at Vision NFC was that whilst many in the industry focus on the overall IT framework needed for compliance, end consumer accessibility through easy to use, mainstream reading devices remains a key requirement to the success of the DPP initiative.

Experts recognize that no one company or technology can sufficiently meet all these needs.

3. Industry standards are therefore essential.

In addition to complexity, the scope is vast. It must be vendor and technology agnostic to ensure competition and longevity. Participants managing the data will need to be able to exchange information across industries, and that can’t be achieved without an agreed, standardized approach.

Standards, however, also need to be flexible. The ambition of the DPP and the need for it to be accessible to all means that the technology must be proven, state-of-the-art and trustworthy, with built in interoperability and reliability across a host of different form factors.

4. NFC Forum’s mission is for NFC to be broader than a data carrier.

NFC technology’s ability to integrate DPP into its proven, secure, convenient and trusted framework exceeds many regulatory requirements. Beyond this, as the experts dig deeper into the topic, its functional suitability isn’t the only appeal of NFC; it’s the technology’s ability to add additional value that is driving the conversation.

This includes addressing wider business challenges. NFC Forum technologies can verify the authenticity of a product as well as flag any attempts to tamper with data stored directly on the product, preventing fraudulent use. NFC Forum tags can also be embedded directly within a product, meaning that should a designer wish to do so, they can make sure the only way to remove the tag is by destroying the product; a strong security measure for high end luxury brands fighting against counterfeiting, and a crucial safeguard for healthcare professionals.

5. Collaboration will drive progress

The NFC industry recognizes an opportunity to transform compliance into business value. For many products, there is a clear business case for either optimizing their existing NFC Forum-based tags for the DPP or embedding it in a new design that allows them to add more end-user or production benefits.

Now is the time to communicate requirements, challenges and ideas, and collaborate to make the NDPP a reality. Industry needs to help businesses make good decisions and educate on the options available.

With the volume, scale and significant investment of the DPP project, there will be no monopoly, but a need for the NFC Forum and its members to once again create a hub of innovation and technical excellent to make NDPP reach its full potential.

NFC Forum Wider Sustainability Vision

Also at Vision NFC, the Forum detailed how its overall mission for sustainability is broader than just being a data carrier.

This includes enabling mainstream ‘universal readers’, namely mobile handsets, to interact with the world around them with a simple tap, to chips and systems being flexible and small enough to reduce waste in industrial design. The ability to remove unnecessary cables for wireless power solutions was re-emphasized, alongside providing a lightweight standards-based