Without card emulation, what's the point of NFC?

---

When I bought my Nexus, one of the main attractions was NFC. Sure, Google Wallet is pretty cool, but the novelty is wearing off. I don't have any real uses for NFC tags. And I only know one other person with a Nexus, so Beam is pretty much useless.

One of the benefits of NFC that I was hoping for was card emulation. I thought I'd be able to head to my school, get the access keys for our RFID cards and then emulate this with my Nexus so that I could open the doors and buy food with my phone - no need to remember the card anymore.

However, upon further reading, it seems that Google won't be allowing us to emulate cards freely. Maybe I've interpreted my findings incorrectly but... it looks like this is the reason why there aren't any emulation apps for Android other than bloody Wallet.

Card emulation is probably the biggest attraction of NFC - instead of carrying around all the diffeent ID cards for the buildings you enter, they can instead be stored on your phone.. It's not like Google Wallet will raise awareness of NFC, since Google seem to be trying their hardest to make sure that it fails (incredibly slow roll out, even for Google).

Originally Posted by WhiterThanWhite

I don't have any real uses for NFC tags.

For you, there is no point.

Originally Posted by WhiterThanWhite

Card emulation is probably the biggest attraction of NFC - instead of carrying around all the diffeent ID cards for the buildings you enter, they can instead be stored on your phone...

It would be great if this can be implemented. However,

1. I don't know if NFC can communicate with existing RFID Card readers
2. There might be a security risk if copying and using RFID cards from your phone is easy

Originally Posted by WhiterThanWhite

When I bought my Nexus, one of the main attractions was NFC. Sure, Google Wallet is pretty cool, but the novelty is wearing off. I don't have any real uses for NFC tags. And I only know one other person with a Nexus, so Beam is pretty much useless.

One of the benefits of NFC that I was hoping for was card emulation. I thought I'd be able to head to my school, get the access keys for our RFID cards and then emulate this with my Nexus so that I could open the doors and buy food with my phone - no need to remember the card anymore.

However, upon further reading, it seems that Google won't be allowing us to emulate cards freely. Maybe I've interpreted my findings incorrectly but... it looks like this is the reason why there aren't any emulation apps for Android other than bloody Wallet.

Card emulation is probably the biggest attraction of NFC - instead of carrying around all the diffeent ID cards for the buildings you enter, they can instead be stored on your phone.. It's not like Google Wallet will raise awareness of NFC, since Google seem to be trying their hardest to make sure that it fails (incredibly slow roll out, even for Google).

Simulate the card means you have to decrypt the card first.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

Honestly, that sounds like a horrible idea. I definitely wouldn't want anybody to be able to just pick up one of my security/credit cards, emulate it, and use it to their hearts content at all

Besides, I believe most of those types of cards have proprietary api's for communicating / validating. Visa, for example, wouldn't just make their api available to anybody so that you can go out and clone other people's cards.

Originally Posted by jav_

Honestly, that sounds like a horrible idea. I definitely wouldn't want anybody to be able to just pick up one of my security/credit cards, emulate it, and use it to their hearts content at all

Besides, I believe most of those types of cards have proprietary api's for communicating / validating. Visa, for example, wouldn't just make their api available to anybody so that you can go out and clone other people's cards.

I understand that my first post was quite long, but you (and the two people who replied before you) didn't fully read it.

I'm not proposing that we allow people to be able to duplicate cards willy-nilly. Like I mentioned, I have the access keys to my school's system. You need the access keys to be able to read data from cards like these, so if some random person with a Nexus found your door card, they wouldn't simply be able to dupe it. They'd need the access keys, which I had to get from the IT department.

Well, that's my basic understanding of how it works anyways.

You could just tape your card to the back of your phone; nothing extra to carry.

Incredibly pessimistic rant that is extremely unique to you imo.

• Google wallet is more about the convenience than a short-lived novelty item like a 'magic 8-ball'
• Beam is nice additional feature and I dont think Google were expecting it to change lives!
• Custom NFC tags are whatever you want them to be! Maybe you need to be a bit creative and tinker around with them?

Overall what you want out of NFC (which was never advertised as a feature anyhow so I don't know why your so disappointed) would have security implications and I think its better off we don't have this feature!

Disable it or sell the thing on?

The proper way to do this is to go to your school or the people who run your card readers and ask them to support an Android app. Being able to clone a card is a very bad idea for the reasons mentioned (and would be a horrible security flaw in any card system), but nothing is preventing NFC-based card systems from creating an app that will allow you to register your phone instead of a separate card. This is essentially what Yale Locks is doing.

I'm working on a android beam client for PCs. You need an nfc reader of course.
If anyone is interested, I can release it in a few weeks.