With Near Field Communication (NFC) popping up in the news on an almost daily basis, it may finally be time to wonder when the great promise of every Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) might start impacting our daily lives. Significantly.
Sure, RFID has been used in the past to tag cattle (much to the disgust of certain Amish farmers) but for the regular Joe Shmos out there, when and how can we expect to see the technology manifest itself in any sort of useful fashion?
Take the supermarket, for example. How long before one can simply fill up one’s cart with RFID tagged goods, pass through an NFC pay station and leave with minimal delays or fiddling about with cash or credit cards.
After all, “contactless” technology should work as advertised, and imagine how much more efficient shopping trips would become. Think “fast-lane” payment at gas stations or toll stops, and you’ll see we’re already using that kind of technology in some places, so why not roll it out rapidly to others?
It’s a relatively simple path towards integrating RFID tags into product packaging, much like barcodes. After that, all a supermarket would need is a fixed RFID reader located anywhere in the supermarket, connected up to a user-operated pay station, and a second fixed RFID reader located near the exit.
For those with NFC enabled phones, payment would be enabled automatically as one left the supermarket (with the receipt being forwarded by email) and for those still attached to cash and cards, they could either swipe or insert bills at a pay station near the exit.
To exit the supermarket, a second RFID detector would ensure the contents of the trolley hadn’t changed and the door would open, allowing the shopper a speedy exit.
Sure, this is bad news for supermarket check-out people, but the supermarket saves money and space, and might be able to create new jobs for tech support people, and the odd conventional check out assistant in case anything goes wrong. It’s also a real time saver for consumers.
The costs of implementing the technology are relatively low, and most mobile phones are getting NFC over the next year anyway, so we’re hoping we’ll be able to shop the hi-tech way very soon indeed.
