Host card emulation for Android passes

VTAP readers are designed to allow NFC Wallet passes, in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, to deliver NFC payloads to a host system. NFC Wallet passes offer many advantages over using QR codes for this purpose - most significantly auto-selection and additional security features.

However, there are areas where it may not be possible to use a Google Wallet NFC pass, despite most Android phones having NFC enabled. For instance, there are many parts of the world where Google Wallet is not available either for payments or for Google Smart Tap NFC passes. (The list of countries where Google Wallet is currently supported can be found here https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/12060037).

In these cases, you could use the Android Host Card Emulation (HCE) feature from within your own Android app to provide similar NFC functionality for Android users, without using Google Wallet.

Android Host Card Emulation is a feature of the Android operating system that allows an app to emulate an NFC card. When this type of app is enabled and running as an Android service:

• The app registers its NFC application identifier (AID) with the Android operating system.

• The phone's NFC system will automatically route messages for this AID to the registered app, which can then respond appropriately.

This method can be used to easily send a payload (such as a user credential) from the app, via NFC, to a VTAP reader that is configured to request it, using the app's AID.

Dot Origin has produced a sample Android app to demonstrate how this works and will provide the source code project, to help Android developers to easily incorporate this feature into their own Android apps.