Near field communication, or NFC, is one of those “under-the-radar” technologies that has been with us for some time and continues to performance relatively flawlessly. It’s surprising that it doesn’t have even wider adoption, seeing how well it works and how many potential applications there are. Today, smartphones gain the lion’s share of the sockets.

A boost to the technology came recently, thanks to a joint announcement by NXP Semiconductors, who have been one of the leaders in NFC, and Qualcomm Technologies. NXP announced that Qualcomm will integrate NXP’s NFC and embedded secure element (eSE) solutions across Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800, 600, 400, and 200 processor based platforms.

The agreement will enable a fairly painless integration of NFC and eSE on Snapdragon-based devices to meet market demands for increased functionality in a broad range of consumer applications. This includes home automation, consumer electronics, automotive, smart appliances, personal computing, and wearables. In the applications, the NFC transmission could be accountable for mobile payments and digital identity, making a secure connection.

Specifically, the new offering will feature the NQ220 module, which was derived from NXP’s PN66T module. The NQ220 lets service providers to easily deliver new applications by simplifying the process of deploying credentials to devices. It can also reduce design costs and time-to-market for mobile wallets and similar applications/devices.