In the year 2020, turbulence rocked the stock market with the beginning of a new global recession which had not been seen since 2009. The bottoming out only lasted a few weeks as the market began to rebound into optimistic highs that set new records. With this strong optimism and large set of returns for investors, new investors decided to try their luck on the market. For some, they decided to invest in SPACs which were all the rage with companies such as The Honest Company and Oatly. As a contrast though, with panic starting to set in because of government shutdowns and food shortages, many went to invest in tried-and-true precious metals such as gold and silver. For gold investments, the U.S. Mint reported its strongest year in 2021 since 2009 which totaled 1.252 million ounces of its Eagle and Buffalo coins. For silver investments, Kitco reports that silver investments grew from 185.7 million ounces in 2019 to 200.5 Moz in 2020.

Now, that many people have gold and silver in their portfolio, it only makes sense that they find a way to prove that they have genuine bullion especially when they want to sell. So, how can they do this digitally without needing a Certificate of Authenticity which could be lost or deleted.

That is where NFC tags comes in.

An NFC (Near-field Communication) tag is a sticker with an antenna and a memory chip inside it. It has the ability to store small amounts of information (less than 1 KB) that is readable only when placed five inches or less from an NFC-enabled reader. This NFC reader can be a separate device ( ACS ACR1255U-J1 Bluetooth Contactless Smart Card NFC Reader ) or within an NFC compatible smart phone running Android or iOS. You may have actually seen NFC being used in contactless payments such as Apple, Google or Samsung Pay. If you ride the bus, transit districts are also using NFC within their bus passes for confirming their fare. For example, MTS has implemented their Pronto Card system which allows a rider to load money onto their card and then tap it on an NFC-enabled smart card reader before going onboard.

This is not all that the NFC technology can do. There are many other uses such as movie posters that take a user to a website, asset management to keep track of inventory levels and many other applications yet to be discovered. The largest benefit is that this occurs in real-time so the user does not have to input a URL into a browser or write it down on a piece of paper. Talk about convenience!

Tx Systems is a leader in NFC compatible stickers and tags from well-known Dutch-based manufacturer, NXP Semiconductors. NXP has dedicated NFC tags such as the NTAG 424 DNA Tag and the NTAG 213 Wet Inlay Tag that will ensure the authenticity of all your collectibles whether they are baseball cards or gold bars. NFC communication is not all that we do! We have been in business since 1997 and specialize in all things smart cards, biometric readers, security tokens and physical access control (PACs). So, you can trust that we understand how to protect both your physical and digital assets. To see how we can solve your specific security needs, please visit our website and view our solutions.

The ideal product for authenticating and protecting your investments would be the Identiv-NXP NTAG 424 DNA Tag Tamper Detection Tag. With a small form factor, adherence to the latest privacy regulations and conformity with major industry standards, this product has your data privacy in mind.

NXP Semiconductors designed this NFC tag for product authenticity and to avoid product tampering through its tamper-resistant tamper loop. For your gold & silver bullion collection, if you have a storage case with the tamper loop over the opening you could track if it was opened or heavily moved. For example, if anyone (a guest, a family member or a housekeeper) were to come across your precious metals collection at home and tried to swipe it, they would find it hard to destroy or remove the tag without you knowing it. Apart from the visible scarring, it would register on your NFC-compatible smart phone.

The NXP 424 Tag Tamper Detection Tag comes with features that allow you to stick the NFC Forum Type 4 Tag on almost any type of case or packaging, so if you had your gold/silver stored in a plastic case then this would suffice. You could program the NFC tag to hold the Certificate of Authenticity, the receipt from where your purchased it and the website that you bought it from. This is supported by the TagTamper’s Secure Unique NFC (SUN) messaging authentication and the ECC-based NXP originality signature. There is also an option for an LRP-based originality check to assure where the tag came from. This means that the tag will show that it is an authentic NXP NFC tag similar to what Microsoft COA stickers do to verify an authentic Windows install.

When paired with an NFC-compatible reader such as the ACS ACR1255U-J1 Bluetooth Contactless Smart Card NFC Reader , you would be able to read/write to the NFC tag via a Windows/macOS/Linux kernel-based computer to place that COA or other authenticity documents within the tag. You would also be able to use your NFC-enabled Android 2.3+ (Gingerbread) and iPhone 7+ to program these tags with NXP apps such as NFC TagInfo for iOS or NFC TagWriter for Android. With a total of 416 bytes of storage space on the NXP NTAG NFC 424 TagTamper broken down as 32 bytes (capability container), 256 bytes (NDEF file for reading function) and 128 bytes for a protected data file for your custom files. NXP includes a free TagXplorer PC-Based NFC Tag Reader-Writer Tool  on their website which allows you to program the NFC tags for Windows, macOS and Linux kernel-based operating systems. Don’t be concerned that these NFC tags are one and done though. Once the NFC data sets have been written to the NFC tags, you would still be able to rewrite to them unless you have made it write-protected.

Rest assured that other cannot easily access your information though as you can grant certain levels of access permissions. This includes three-pass mutual authentication in order to access the 128 bytes protected data file which means placing the TagTamper tag in front of your NFC-enabled reader three times before access.

When scanning your NXP 424 TagTamper Tag from your iPhone or Laptop on your gold/silver storage case, you do not need to worry about an interloper capturing that feed as these tags support AES 128-bit encrypted end-to-end data transmission/secure messaging. This will not slow you down though as data speeds can be up to 848 kbits per second. As added protection, these NFC tags use encrypted unique identifiers and a random ID to keep your data flowing while keeping the device’s identity hidden. So, the NFC-enabled reader will show that there is a NFC tag, but its identification will only show a random one-time ID rather than the actual name of the tag. If somehow an interloper came across your device, all they would see is gibberish rather than personally identifying data on your bullion collection.

NFC tags were shown as way back as 2014 at CES Las Vegas with Adidas Shoes. Their goal was to prove that their running shoes were authentic while creating a marketing opportunity. This was reasonable given that many of their shoes are between $80 to $150 pair which is a large amount of money for shoes. Jeff Fonseka with Global Marketing Business Development for NXP demonstrated with his Android smartphone the power of the Addidas NFC tag by having it open the miCoach app. The video linked below from NXP goes into further detail.

For product authentication purposes, if a consumer were to buy a pair of Adidas shoes from Amazon or eBay, they would be able to scan the NFC tag using their smartphone to verify that it is indeed a legitimate shoe. If there is no NFC tag or it returns an intelligible result then the consumer knows that it is a fake. This would allow Adidas to weed out counterfeits and follow through with prosecution while ensuring that the customer stays informed as to what to look for in a fake.

A great use case for NFC smart tags for product authenticity comes from a Florida-based company called MintID , est. by Corey Maita , which sells precious metals such as platinum, gold, and silver. As you can imagine, these types of investments cost significant amounts of money for very small quantities of each metal. For example, the price of one ounce of gold, as of writing, is $1,935.07 which is not including the fees that are attached when buying it from an exchange. So, authenticity is paramount for both the investor and whoever they sell it to! The most important part for an investor of any asset is to sell their investment higher than what they bought it for. However, when selling tangible assets, the buyer wants to know that the product is legitimate, and that they are not being scammed with Pyrite or some mixture of gold.

That is what the MintID app is trying to solve.

The MintID app is an Android and iOS-based app that users can download from the respective app stores for free. Their NFC tags are AES-128 bit encrypted with a unique identifier embedded within the tag which is placed onto the precious metals. With an NFC-enabled reader on your iPhone or Android, it can pull up a detailed product specification with the name, description, metal content and purity along with options to sell or purchase more. There is a colored notification to determine whether the product is Not Genuine (RED) or Genuine (GREEN).

In an effort to digitize the precious metals space, the product descriptions and inventory are stored in the cloud which will provide quick access for the investor. So for example, if you were to buy a 1 ounce Silver MintID Round from MintID , you would receive the physical bullion with a Smart NFC Tag which would contain the records of your bullion (product specifications). As long as your smart phone has NFC capabilities, you would be able to scan the NFC smart tag within the MintID app. If you don’t have NFC capabilities on your smart phone then you could also purchase a mobile Android-compatible NFC reader from us such as the Identiv SCL3711 USB NFC Reader.

NFC tags are quite amazing and can be used in many different ways, and their applications are only growing. The NXP NTAG TagTamper Detection Tag is great if you have an application where you need to verify your product authenticity such as in the trade of precious metals/collectibles or if you are a collector yourself. You can purchase the NXP NTAG TagTamper Detection Tag from our site. If you are a desktop (or even mobile) user, don’t forget to pair that with the ACS ACR1255U-J1 Bluetooth Contactless Smart Card NFC Reader , so you can read your NFC tags that you have placed on your collectibles.

So, with both of these NFC-enabled devices, you are ready to start your NFC journey!