NFC Times Exclusive – As the NFC Forum develops its tag Type 5 specification based on the ISO/IEC 15693 protocol, industry sources say that NFC tags using the longer-range protocol could see demand in medical, industrial, and supply chain applications, and most handsets and readers on the market can currently read the tags, although there are still concerns about interoperability and security.

NFC Forum executive director Paula Hunter confirmed to NFC Times in early January that the NFC Forum is working on a tag Type 5 specification.

Like the other four existing NFC Forum tag types, the future Type 5 tags would be configured to support NDEF messages, but ISO 15693, sometimes referred to as the NFC-V option, is based on an RFID protocol for so-called "vicinity" cards, which has a range up to 10 times longer than the ISO/IEC 14443 standard, often referred to as the "proximity card" standard, which has underpinned the NFC communication standard to date.