StoLPaN Consortium looks to the future with NFC

January 2007: Focusing on ‘Store Logistics and Payment with NFC’, the StoLPaN consortium is looking into the enormous opportunities that open up when you combine NFC with the world’s most popular mobile device – the cellphone.

Payment, ticketing, access control, content distribution, smart advertising, peer-to-peer data/money transfer… There’s almost no limit to the potential applications of NFC in stores. But lots of different industries need to cooperate to make the most of these possibilities.

That’s why Motorola, Deloitte, Safepay Ltd., Sun and NXP Semiconductors have come together with other leading companies, universities and user groups to found the StoLPaN consortium. A nonprofit member of the NFC Forum, the consortium is co-funded by the European Commission’s IST program.

The aim is to establish a secure, interoperable ‘smart retail environment’ that takes full advantage of this huge range of potential NFC applications. The consortium is figuring out which applications and use cases NFC will enable – and which business rules and technical requirements are needed to make them work with all kinds of handsets, network operators and service providers. The first version of those rules and requirements is expected by the summer of 2007. A second major objective, a single mobile NFC host platform giving consumers a uniform, easy-to-use interface for all applications, will follow soon after.

Of course, phones are only part of the equation: StoLPaN is also developing and testing the support devices at check-outs and other in-store locations. And finally, we will be conducting demonstrations to show the world how the solutions will actually work in a retail environment.

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