NFC Forum members to showcase revolutionary retail solutions

NRF 101st Annual Convention & Expo, WAKEFIELD, USA: The NFC Forum announced that three of its members – INSIDE Secure, Kovio, and ViVOtech – are demonstrating applications that will change the way consumers with NFC-enabled mobile phones interact with the retail community.

The NFC Forum is a non-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which gives retailers and manufacturers unique one-to-one marketing and loyalty-building opportunities at the point of sale and throughout the retail environment.

NFC technology is sparking a wide variety of innovations in retail, as well as areas such as access control, gaming, healthcare and wellness, hospitality, loyalty, marketing, mobile payment, mobile social media, and pairing of consumer electronics devices. The demonstrations highlight the broad range of NFC use cases that specifically benefit retailers, and they are being held in Booth #1951 of the ARTS Pavilion at the Annual Convention and Expo of the National Retail Federation (NRF) taking place at the Jacob Javits Center in New York.

INSIDE Secure, a Sponsor Member of the NFC Forum, with a seat on the Board of Directors, will demonstrate a product authentications service for the retail world. Kovio Inc., an Associate Member, will show how its NFC products and services will enable a completely new paradigm in the consumer’s direct interaction with brands and retailers by enabling personalized, instantaneous, and contextual experiences at point of purchase and point of use.

Kovio will also demonstrate the integration of its NFC products in item-level product packaging for shopper marketing, location-based advertising, and brand authentication. ViVOtech, Inc., an Associate member, will show its mobile marketing software platform, ViVOtouch, which allows merchants to deliver personalized offers, content, loyalty and prepaid cards in real time to shoppers' mobile phones.

Offers and loyalty rewards can be redeemed with a single tap along with payment at a contactless point-of-sale terminal, redeemed visually via bar codes and coupon codes, or in the cloud. The personalized content is based on location, time, context, and user profile, helping drive consumers' behavior throughout their paths to purchase.

"NFC technology is an enhancement to the payment experience that finally brings direct benefits to the retailer and the consumer alike," said Debbie Arnold, NFC Forum director. "Our NFC Forum member solutions are at the vanguard of this revolution, and we look forward to sharing them with NRF attendees."

"NFC is a backbone of mobile innovation in retail," said Richard Mader, executive director of the NRF's Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS). "We are very pleased that select NFC Forum members will be demonstrating ground-breaking mobile applications in the ARTS Pavilion that have the potential to revolutionize interactions between consumers and retailers."