Yes, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were the first iPhone models to ship with NFC. However, the Near Field Communication in Apple products is currently only used for Apple Pay and not for reading NFC tags. There have been rumors that Apple may open SDK access to the NFC controller with the release of the iPhone 7, but it was not released in iOS 10, like some had predicted.
NFC technology has many applications besides payment processing. It can be used to enhance games, for promotional marketing, security and so on. Opening NFC to more options will allow third-party developers to offer iPhone users all types of new features they have never seen before.
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GoToTags replied on Permalink
All iPhones since the iPhone 6 have an NFC controller in them. The NFC controller was originally used to support NFC based payment transactions for Apple Pay. As a part of iOS 11, Apple added Core NFC which is an iOS SDK for apps to be able to read NDEF encoded NFC tags. The ability to read NFC tags with an iPhone is only supported by the iPhone 7, iPhone 8 and iPhone X; the iPhone 6 can NOT read NFC tags with iOS 11. Note that no iPhone can write NFC tags with iOS 11. The implications of this are that all NFC tags to be used by an iPhone must have previously been NDEF encoded. Blank NFC tags purchased from Amazon will not work until they have been encoded. The GoToTags Store uses the GoToTags NFC Encoder software to encode NFC tags for customers. Also, an app is required to read NFC tags. iOS does not have native support for handling NDEF encoded NFC tags in the way that Android does with their tag dispatch system. The GoToTags iPhone App can read NFC tags and scan barcodes to perform device actions.
For more details, read the blog posts on the GoToTags website.
Ragul replied on Permalink
I have an iPhone 7 and the device supports NFC. But when i tried to create an NFC reader through app, I was not able to read any NFC tags. So will iPhone 7 with ios version 11.2.6 will read NFC tags.
Kathleen replied on Permalink
I have the same problem...will NFC be working on iPhone 7 Plus anytime soon?