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HID: The Business Benefits of Mobile Technology: Will NFC spell the end for the doorkey?
August 2012 by HID
We never go anywhere without our mobile phones and they’re no longer just for calling to say the train is late, we rely on them for all our business needs. But could the mobile phone signal the end of a pocket full of keys and cards?
© Lim Yong Hian
The advent of secure plastic access-control cards has reduced the importance of the mechanical key. These cards have become increasingly capable and intelligent and now, a quantum leap in access-control technology may do away with both mechanical keys and even cards, by ushering in a new era of portable identity credentials embedded into smartphones.
Near field communications or NFC, the term used to refer to a collection of short-range wireless technologies for exchanging data between devices, is a prime technology for this. It is quick, easy and secure. A mobile phone equipped with NFC technology can be used to carry a portable identity credential and then wirelessly present it to a reader. The phone is simply waved in front of the reader and the user opens the door. The ultimate goal is to bring about a convergence of services at the heart of your daily routine, such as banking and payments, transport, and secure access.
The simplest model for NFC digital keys is to simply replicate existing card-based access-control principles. The phone communicates identity information to a reader, which passes the identity to the existing access-control system, which opens the door.
The Clarion Hotel in Stockholm piloted such a system in 2011, replacing room keys with digital keys sent to guests’ NFC-enabled mobile phones pre-installed with mobile keys software. Guests were able to skip the check-in queue and go directly to their room where they presented the phone to the lock to open the door. When checking out, guests simply touched their phones to a kiosk in the lobby.
60% of trial respondents said they saved more than ten minutes by using the digital key solution, and 80% said they would use the system if available. The hotel meanwhile benefitted by re-allocating check-in staff to other customer service areas and having a cheaper and easier option to replacing lost keys.
Industry experts predict that NFC will revolutionise our lives in the coming years. Dr. Tam Hulusi, SVP at HID Global, says: “The checklist mantra as we leave our homes – “keys, wallet, phone” – is about to get shorter. It won’t be long before we see the functionality of all three encapsulated in one NFC-enabled handset.”
Air travellers have already shown interest in using their phones as boarding passes and in Japan, NFC payment systems are installed in fast-food restaurants, taxis, and vending machines. On university campuses, students will be able to use NFC mobile phones to enter buildings, make purchases, use transport systems and identify themselves before taking tests. NFC phones could even be used to provide doctors or paramedics with access to your personal health history.
NFC is set to impact us all with a new era of more convenient mobile keys and credentials that can be embedded into phones and other portable devices for a wide variety of physical and logical secure access applications – watch this space.
