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Payment Technology

NFC

Term from the vending glossary

Near Field Communication — contactless radio connection over a few centimetres. Foundation for Tap-to-Pay with card, smartphone or employee badge at the vending machine.

NFC operates at 13.56 MHz and is standardized in ISO/IEC 14443 and ISO/IEC 15693. The practical operating range is 0–4 cm, which significantly reduces skimming risk. For payment transactions at the vending machine, exclusively the NFC mode Card Emulation is used — the terminal is the reader, the card/smartphone is the emulator.

In the vending context, NFC is increasingly displacing older card reader technologies (magnetic stripe, chip-insert). From mid-2024 onwards, many new cashless terminals in Europe are NFC-only — without a slot for physical cards.

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Related terms

CashlessCashless payment at vending machines via girocard, credit card, NFC, mobile payment or employee ID. Reduces cash handling and vandalism risk.MDB 4.3Current MDB protocol version (2018) with native cashless support, NFC, and mobile payment. De facto standard in European vending operations.NayaxProvider of cashless payment terminals and management platform for vending machines. Often integrated via MDB 4.3 as a retrofit terminal in existing machines.

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