SK Planet’s radical touchpoint design sees NFC interaction soar

A radical new NFC touchpoint design, coupled with the offer of nationally redeemable rewards, led to consumer interactions increasing by a factor of more than 20 at a recent exhibition in Korea, SK Planet has told NFC World. The touchpoints are now to be rolled out to 10,000 Korean retailers from next month.

Twenty stands were equipped with the bright red horn-like touchpoints during the exhibition, enabling visitors to use their NFC phones to obtain product information and collect digital stamps that could be turned into OK Cashbag loyalty points.

EYE CATCHING: SK Planet's bright red horn-shaped NFC touchpoint

OK Cashbag is a loyalty scheme run by SK Planet which enables its 36 million members to earn and use points at 50,000 merchant partners.

Overall, over the four days of the event, 4,700 visitors interacted with the touchpoints a total of 70,000 times — twenty times as many as took place during a similar event last year.

"NFC stickers are often used in Korea," SK Planet's Seonil Moon told NFC World. "Users rarely noticed the stickers in stores because they were very small and surrounded by other non-NFC stickers.

"However, our touchpoints successfully catch the customer's attention through its unique 'speaker' design, even in a very crowded exhibition."

"We are installing the touchpoints in 10,000 stores over a year starting from November as part of our national NFC non-payment service tied with OK Cashbag."

"SK Planet usually provides digital coupons through the touchpoints," he added. "This is the first time we've offered OK Cashbag points.

"Users were not interested in digital coupons because they were for one time use and available in a number of other ways online. This time, users began thinking that they can gather OK Cashbag points through tapping more often to earn more points."

French drivers will receive multi-license with support for NFC

French drivers are issued new driving licenses based on contactless smart cards that contain both open and closed field data. Locked data area can only be accessed by the police and other departments, and the open area of ​​data can be read by an NFC phone and used by third parties, for example, to store information about insurance and placement of virtual keys.

New driver's licenses are made Imprimerie Nationale, the French national printing press, as well as using the technology of electronic driving licenses Sealys from Gemalto

BWC offers rugged NFC tablet

Mobile device supplier BWC is now offering a rugged 7-inch tablet that comes with NFC. The ToughSlate 7" meets the IP67 standard, ensuring it is waterproof, dustproof and durable.

Powered by a 1GHz quad core MTK6589 from MediaTek, the device runs Android 4.2.2 and includes Bluetooth 4.0, 3G and WiFi connectivity.

The ToughSlate 7" is available now at £499 (US$806).