Winners announced for 2024 NFC Forum Innovation Awards

The top five winners were announced following the culmination of the first ever Innovation Awards Open Public Vote in a ceremony held at the NFC Forum European Member Meeting in Nice, France.

ProQure, a technology provider of IoT Cloud management for physical objects, was announced as a winner for its NFC IC PQ201-S. This type two tag has been designed specifically for the intelligent packaging market, featuring a PUF security feature, leveraging proprietary chip design and Cloud-based authentication. Its novelty security features mitigate the risk of replay attacks and data sniffing, helping to address rising vulnerabilities around brand protection.

BP Digital was a winner with NOUMI – an innovative plug-and-play solution that allows retail customers to collect digital copies of their receipts via a simple tap of an NFC enabled mobile device. Positioned between the EPOS and the thermal printer, NOUMI intercepts the print data and decodes it, enabling customers to tap their phone on the NOUMI Device to collect digital receipts onto the NOUMI App.

Erisco was successful with its battery-less smart padlock. The device utilises the power harvesting capabilities to authenticate the user, then trigger the mechanism that locks and unlocks the padlock. Erisco’s high efficiency coil optimises energy harvesting over a variety of phones, allowing for quick energy transfer and reasonable data transfer rates on a variety of devices.

Blu Oberon’s bluon.me Semiperdo Smart Wristband for children was recognised as offering outstanding safety and convenience with its built-in NFC tag. The wristband seamlessly communicates with smartphones through the embedded NFC tag in the elastic fabric. By simply tapping the wristband, a web page opens that instantly sends the child's location to the parents, using the phone of the person who finds them.

The final winner was App Creator by IoTize; a low-code environment for designing apps with minimal expertise and effort. App Creator offers a drag-and-drop editor for rapid UI design using libraries of graphical interface components. Then, in its data flow editor, designers build their app logic by simply linking nodes from NFC, math, logic, and other function libraries.

“NFC technology has been a tried and trusted lynchpin of the connected device ecosystem for over 20 years, but this year’s Innovation Awards have proven that we are still finding countless new ways to harness its power,” comments Mike McCamon, Executive Director of NFC Forum. “Each of the finalists for the awards presented outstanding, products, services and experiences that showcase the capabilities of NFC technology. Thank you to all those who submitted entries and we are all excited to see what transformative solutions are presented next year.”

The awards are designed to recognise the unique solutions and use cases that demonstrate how the use of NFC contactless technology continues to improve people’s lives.