NFC Cards

An NFC card is a plastic card with a small chip and antenna sealed inside. Tap it on a phone or a reader and the two exchange data over a few centimeters. The card itself is the easy part. What decides whether it works for you is the chip inside it and what your system expects to find there. This page covers the chips in plain terms, what we keep in stock, what we quote, and how to print on NFC cards without ruining them. For how NFC fits alongside prox, iCLASS and magnetic stripe, see our guide to access credentials and encoding.

What an NFC card actually is

NFC stands for near field communication. It runs at 13.56 MHz and only works at very short range, which is the point: you have to mean it to tap it. It is one branch of the larger RFID family, and the cards follow the same ISO/IEC 14443A standard as most contactless smart cards. Our glossary entry on NFC has the short version.

It is not the same thing as a prox card. Standard proximity cards run at 125 kHz, a different frequency entirely. A phone cannot read them, and an NFC reader will not see them at all. If your building already runs on prox, an NFC card will not open its doors, however similar the two look.

The other thing to know up front is that an NFC card does nothing on its own. It holds data and, depending on the chip, protects it. Something else writes that data: a hotel's front desk encoder, an access control system, a membership platform, or a phone app. The card has to match whatever does the writing.

The chips, in plain terms

Most of the confusion around NFC cards comes from the chip names. These are the ones that come up most often.

• MIFARE Classic 1K. The workhorse, and the one we stock. It holds one kilobyte, split into sectors that each have their own keys, so different applications can share one card. You will find it in hotel locks, building access, cashless vending and older transit systems. Phone support for it is uneven, so if your card has to work with phones, tell us before you order.
• MIFARE Ultralight. A simpler, lower-cost chip with a small memory. It suits short-life uses such as event tickets, day passes and some loyalty programs, where the card does one job for a while and is then thrown away.
• NTAG213, NTAG215 and NTAG216. These are what tap-to-share cards and most phone apps use. They differ mainly in how much they hold, from enough for a single web link to enough for a full contact record. If you want someone to tap your card with a phone and land on a page, this is usually the family you want.
• MIFARE DESFire. A higher-security chip used in access control, campus cards and transit. It costs more and is chosen for its security, not its price.

HID iCLASS and Seos are also 13.56 MHz credentials, but they belong to HID's own system rather than to the general NFC world. Those are covered on our access card programming page.

What we stock, and what we quote

We keep blank MIFARE Classic 1K cards in stock in packs of 100, 200, 500 and 1,000. They are white CR-80 PVC at 30 mil, the same size and thickness as any other ID card, so they feed in the card printer you already own.

They ship blank and unencoded. We program HID credentials only, so the chip is yours to write with whatever system the card is for. That keeps it simple: you get a clean, printable card, and your system puts its own data on it.

For anything beyond that, we quote. That includes MIFARE Ultralight, the NTAG range, DESFire, and custom-printed runs of any of them. Tell us the chip if you know it, the quantity, and what the card has to do, and we will come back with a price and a lead time. If you do not know the chip, tell us what reads the card and we will work out what to ask the supplier.

Custom-printed NFC cards

If you need cards printed with your design in volume, custom runs start at 500 cards. That suits membership and loyalty programs, event passes, hotel keys and branded tap-to-share cards, where every card carries the same artwork.

A custom run can be printed on both sides and can add sequential numbering, a barcode or a magnetic stripe alongside the chip. You supply the finished artwork and we handle production. Lead times depend on the chip and the finish, so we confirm them on the quote rather than guess here. Our custom plastic cards page walks through how a run is ordered. If you are still sorting out NFC from other contactless cards, our post on NFC versus RFID covers the difference.

For smaller jobs, or cards that each carry a different name and photo, it usually makes more sense to print blank NFC cards yourself, or have us do it through our ID card printing service.

Printing on NFC cards yourself

NFC cards print like any other PVC card in a dye sublimation printer. The chip and antenna are sealed inside the card, so you design the front and back as normal.

Card quality still matters. A good NFC card has the same smooth surface as plain PVC. Cheaper cards can show a faint outline of the antenna or an uneven patch over the chip, and direct-to-card printing shows every flaw in the surface. A retransfer printer prints onto film first and then bonds the film to the card, so it copes much better with technology cards. Our guide to direct-to-card versus retransfer printing explains the difference.

One mistake costs more than any other: punching a slot through the antenna. The antenna runs around the inside edge of the card, and a slot punch in the wrong place cuts it and kills the card. If you need a slot, use a vertical or horizontal position the card maker marks as safe, or attach the card with a holder instead. Our badge accessories page covers the options.

How to check what a card is

If you have a card in hand and need to know what chip it carries, a phone can usually tell you. Free NFC reader apps, including NXP's own TagInfo, identify the chip type when you hold the card against the back of the phone.

If the app shows MIFARE Classic 1K, that is the card we stock. If it shows something else, send us the name it reports and we will quote it. If the app shows nothing at all, the card is probably a 125 kHz prox card or a magnetic stripe card, and an NFC card is not the right replacement.

Where NFC cards get used

• Hotel room keys. Many hotel locks read MIFARE Classic. See our page on hotel key cards.
• Membership, loyalty and gyms. A tap at the front desk instead of a barcode scan. See gym member cards and member cards for clubs and non-profits.
• Events. Tap-in passes that are harder to copy than a printed barcode.
• Tap-to-share cards. A business or promotional card that opens a web page when tapped with a phone.