New use cases for NFC (Near Field Communication), based on pairing with WiFi and Bluetooth, will be opened up by the first specification to support full two-way communication between smartphones and IoT devices. The venerable NFC protocol, first standardized by ISO/IEC in 2003, has already been exploited to the hilt for direct communication at distances up to four centimeters for smart payment and ticketing applications, as well as machine-readable documents including passports. But this great strength of being confined in distance also lends itself to a range of pairing applications where security is still required, but alongside the ability to transfer far larger amounts of data at distance. The NFC component can be used to establish temporary communications for a…