What is the difference between NFC and contactless?

What is the difference between NFC and contactless?

Just a matter of words. In fact there are a number of terms (RFID / Contactless / NFC) which have more or less precise definitions for the experts, but are used in the more general press in a variety of ways. So these terms are used in different ways by different people.

To be slightly more precise. Contactless refers to a range of technologies using RF (Radio Frequency) to communicate between a terminal and another device (often a card). It is most often used to refer to products around the ISO 14443 and ISO 15693 standards, which both use a 13.56Mhz frequency, but people will use it for other devices and frequencies.

NFC (Near Field Communications) is a set of specifications published by the NFC forum, based on ISO14443 and ISO 18092 which also work at 13.56MHz but with the particularity of using the technology both ways round. So integrated into a phone NFC can be used to make the phone behave like a contactless card (called card emulation) or as a card reader. By extension many people refer to cards and terminals that can do one half (using ISO14443) as NFC Cards or NFC Readers.

To wrap up Contactless is a more generic term covering several technoloical standards, NFC refers to a precise set of specifications, they are pretty closely related but both terms are used with varying amounts of precision.