Some background on NFC

The mobile phone is increasingly important to a wide range of organisations looking to develop deeper relationships with their customers. There are several contributing factors:

The installed base of internet-ready devices and improved screens make phones a realistic platform for marketing applications.
Consumer preference for the convenience of online services, such as internet banking and electronic bill payment.
The popularity and low cost of SMS. The read rate for SMS is more than 90 per cent and for more targeted complex campaigns, using mobile web, the click through rate can be as high as 60 per cent.

The development of truly profitable value-added services, as found by a number of recent studies, requires a more sophisticated technology platform than SMS. This is where NFC fits in, offering:

Seamless integration with established contactless card technology - simplifies the acceptance of mobile payments and redemption of phone-based offers.
Easy integration with other forms of marketing and advertising - NFC tags can be embedded in printed media, outdoor advertising, ATMs and POS. A simple trigger for service discovery, smart posters offer fast access to highly relevant mobile web content.
Traceability and measurement of subscriber actions - NFC can make it easier to track who did what and when, giving service providers better insight into customer behaviour.

What does Proxama Touch do?

Our framework solution consists of software that sits on the phone and a central applications server. This server enables management of the phone-based applications as well as supporting mobile web sites and RFID tags that make up smart poster campaigns. We have included digital signature security on RFID devices and smart posters, meaning that data cannot be read or updated without authorisation.

Proxama Touch has been developed with the specific intention of ensuring easy integration with other solution providers. Our approach is designed to help securely underpin the NFC ecosystem. It is built according to industry standards, including NFC Forum specifications and supports all consumer NFC enabled handsets. Our rapid application development process means that we can very quickly create new application propositions for prototype, trial or roll-out.

What applications does Proxama Touch support?

Proxama Touch gives you the flexibility to build services round your customers' user journeys. As such it supports all card-based applications. Examples of current use by our customers include:

managing over-the-air download of payment & ticketing applications onto the phone
enhancing contactless payment applications via a multi-functional 'wallet'
providing on-phone payment receipts and card risk management
running marketing campaigns based on NFC smart posters
managing customer loyalty and reward schemes
creating innovative peer-to-peer payment and information sharing applications

We have experience of integrating all major international payment applications.

What does it look like?

We have a demo kit available that comes complete with example smart posters and a phone, if you want to get to the heart of what NFC can do. In the meantime, the diagram below covers the basic architecture of our framework.

How do smart posters work?

In the example scenario below, a smart poster in an estate agent's window can help banks to promote property-related products - from savings and loans to home insurance - to both new and existing customers. By simply touching the poster the potential customer can register for a call back to discuss financing options. An existing customer simply needs to register their interest while a new customer will be asked in the following screen to tap in their phone number.