Your phone’s NFC tech will soon get its biggest upgrade ever – here are 4 new features coming to iPhones and Android

• A new and official NFC roadmap for 2026 has been published
• Proposed upgrades include speeds and security
• The improved tech should roll out to all handsets eventually

NFC (Near Field Communication) is an essential bit of phone tech, used for everything from mobile payments to quick device pairing. Now the protocol is about to get one of the biggest upgrades in its entire history.

The latest roadmap published by The NFC Forum (via SamMobile) outlines the plans for the wireless connectivity tech for the rest of 2026 and beyond – and there are some useful-sounding upgrades on the way.

Chief among these upgrades is the goal to increase NFC speeds by up to 8x in the near future, which means the standard should become a more viable option for beaming larger amounts of data between two devices (watch out Bluetooth).

There's also a commitment to make NFC more versatile and able to support a broader range of uses – even multiple uses in a single tap. The ease with which you can use your smartphone to pay for something could soon apply in various other scenarios too.

'Clear value'

Security improvements are another part of this roadmap, with The NFC Forum wanting to tighten down rules on verifying devices – to make sure your gadgets always know what they're communicating with and why.

Lastly, there are plans to level up NFC so that it can be used across a variety of "innovative new digital key experiences", meaning we might soon be using our phones for a broader range of unlocking and verifying tasks.

Roadmap proposals typically arrive on phones within a year or two, and given that Google, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Apple are all involved in The NFC Forum, it shouldn't be too long before we see some of these upgrades starting to show up on our handsets.

"The active engagement in the evolution of NFC technology from an ever-increasing number of industries is testament to the clear value it provides to users globally," Mike McCamon, the executive director of The NFC Forum, said in a press statement.

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