Android & iOS NFC usage without opening the mobile app

Question

We have a flutter based mobile app, and a Raspberry (which communicate with the backend) with a nfc reader module (it mifare compatible). Now working with physical RFID cards, and the expected operation is if someone's mobile device compatible with it they can read the mobile device nfc data without opening any mobile app and the backend can analyse that, and can determine the user and selecting the user profile in backend.

In Android you can use the built-in NFC module with api - even in idle mode - ie without opening the app.

In iOS - a little more complicated - before iOS15, apple only allowed the built-in NFC module to be used for banking transactions. In iOS15, however, there is already an api function that can be used in idle mode to emulate an “access” NFC card.

So my question if the mobile can send NFC data without opening the mobile app, then how can analyse the raw data in backend after got from the raspberry?

My opinion is that it can't work without opening the mobile app, because the mobile app must running if you want to send or receive nfc data.

Solution

On Android you can do this yourself with Host Card Emulation (HSE) but with iOS you cannot.

But for both you could do it without opening an App on both by integrating to Apple's and Google's wallet systems (Using something like https://passkit.com/ ) as then you can have something like a contactless bank/loyalty card stored inbuilt wallet system.

I would forget using anything Mifare as this is a proprietary technology and not support by some phones, you should be targetting NFC Forum compliant Technology, more Specifically NFC Type 4 as used by contactless bank cards.

Comments

[nszmmp]

Thx your answer, but what want to use not a bank or credit card, its just a custom RFID card. So the apple and google wallet system can handle custom rfid cards too? Anyway, I check the pass kit, its great, but as I see not free, its sadly a pay as you go solution.

[Andrew]

Unfortunately on iOS you have limited options with NFC to do this type of stuff. The best you can do for free is have an App running in the foreground that acts as a reader/writer and then the hardware attached to the Raspberry pi pretends to be an NFC card (a lot of readers can do this), you basically you are reversing the roles you would normally do with a physical card. The App to send data basically writes data to what it sees as a physical NFC card.