As kids, most can recall memories of receiving a new, shiny toy and wanting to keep it all to ourselves. It’s usually in those instances where we were introduced to the concept of “sharing”.
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary:
sharing (v): to partake of, use, experience, occupy, or enjoy with others.
At first, sharing doesn’t make much sense to us as kids. Or rather, we simply don’t want to. It’s our new toy, so why would we want to share it? It’s not until we are taught the importance of sharing that we start to see friendships being made, community being built and a mutual respect for those around us. In fact, we usually want to practice sharing even more because we see the positive results for the betterment of the group.
The same can be said for the NFC Wallet.
As we all know, the NFC Wallet is the new, shiny toy entering the access control market. We even recently announced our support for employee badge in Apple Wallet. However, the first instinct for many is to keep it to themselves. But there are problems with doing so.
Let us explain…
The NFC Wallet credential provided by these mega-techs is proprietary and it has specific security identifiers for the credential manager like WaveLynx. Those identifiers need to be incorporated into the hardware (readers) that ultimately accepts the NFC credential.
The natural reaction for the access control industry has been to not share and to keep the new, shiny “toy” to itself and make as much money as possible.
In short, companies use the hardware to trap end users and integrators into their solution. So if you have the reader, you can bully your way on the playground of access control and force others to play with you if you have a large enough market share.
At Wavelynx, rather, we choose to openly share and enable this technology to be used by other hardware and software manufacturers. Our goal will never be to trap companies, but rather to enable them to play nice together. After all, if everyone plays nice in the sandbox, a crowd forms and bystanders wonder what all the commotion is all about.
There are a plethora of readers in the access control market, but not all will be able to accommodate the NFC Wallet in the way that it’s intended… at least immediately. And if they can, they are most likely not interoperable, which limits your usage. This limitation is either in regards to what the Wallet credential can be used for or the ecosystem it can be used within. Proprietary ecosystems limit a customer’s choice, flexibility and control.
At Wavelynx, we strive to provide customers access without limits. We understand the importance and the value of sharing and collaborating – which is why we have designed our platform with interoperability top-of-mind. This interoperability enables customers to choose not only what solutions they’d like to bring into the Wallet (locks, vending, print, etc.), but also the providers they’d like to use in order to do so.
The NFC Wallet solution with WaveLynx enables your security ecosystem to move towards a mobile access framework, seamlessly and securely from endpoint to endpoint. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can implement the Wallet at your facility, please contact us today.