A Comparative Study of NFC and UWB Technologies for Secure Contactless Payment Systems

Abstract

Contactless payment systems have witnessed a complete revolution driven by the emerging advancements in wireless communication technology, with Near Field Communication (NFC) and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) now playing prominent roles in this area. NFC has become increasingly popular in smartphones, smart cards and point-of-sale devices because of its ease of use, low power requirements and limited communications range. Because of the increasing need for stronger security, accurate positioning and protection against relay attacks, UWB has become a preferred choice. A detailed comparison of NFC and UWB technologies is provided to evaluate their suitability for secure contactless payment systems. The performance of both technologies is examined against important metrics such as transmission distance, speed, responsiveness, power consumption, compatibility and resilience to attack. A set of experiments using actual hardware implementations were carried out to replicate real-world payment scenarios and investigate the protection they provide against security threats like eavesdropping, relay and impersonation. The analysis shows that NFC excels at handling everyday low-power transactions within short distances but is prone to unauthorized access by proximal devices. UWB is an emerging technology well-suited for delivering state-of-the-art security and accurate spatial recognition capabilities in future high-integrity payment systems. The research highlights the need to use technologies such as NFC or UWB or a combination of both in different use-cases in order to build highly secure, convenient and efficient contactless payment environments.