In all areas where NFC is applied, especially in contactless payments, failure in communication can lead to bad user acceptance. Ralph Kamp, product manager for NFC test solutions at COMPRION explains: “Probably all of us have experienced this before:
You are lining up at the checkout of your favourite coffee shop, wanting to pay your morning coffee quickly with a contactless card or smartphone. For whatever reason, tap & go doesn’t work. The line is getting longer and longer, the faces of the people behind you are getting grumpier, until finally, you must run to the next ATM to get some cash. This is bad for you, bad for the other customers, bad for the coffee shop – and for the payment provider – bad for everyone.”
Especially payment providers have a strong interest in eliminating contactless communication problems. The new TraceCase – a small, mobile trace tool that can be easily controlled by smartphone – traces the interaction between two NFC devices such as POS terminals and NFC-enabled smartphone or contactless card. “Very often, the reason for failure lies in the interference or distortion of electrical signals. These can be easily identified by our new field tracer”, explains Kamp.
Now, payment providers can equip a whole team of field testers with the cost-effective tracer. “As setup and handling of the device are very easy, only a short training is required”, so Kamp. The tracer is very inconspicuous so that contactless transactions can be monitored during daily business – without unsettling vendors or customers. “However, the tracer doesn’t collect user-sensitive banking data”, promises Kamp.
The collected data is sent from the smartphone to the lab for troubleshooting. Using the powerful TraceCase Viewer software, the engineer can analyse and resolve the communication problems. As TraceCase is the only tracer of its kind worldwide that collects analogue signals, errors on all levels can be easily found. TraceCase is immediately available.
For more information, please visit the TraceCase product page.
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