This is what might be called a succesful failure. When smart-card reader is attached to a recent vintage Windows machine (Vista and later) joined to a domain networks, it presents the option to logon using a smartcard instead of a password:Ĭlicking on the smart-card option, we are prompted to insert a smartcard:Īt this point, turning the screen on and tapping it against the contactless smart card reader leads to a flurry of activity, with the message “reading smartcard” briefly flashed under the tile, quickly followed by an error: Contactless or dual-interface smartcard reader.

Machine joined to an Active Directory domain (** It is also possible to do this using stand-alone PC but that requires installing third-party software.).Virtual machines are fine for this purpose. Recent vintage Windows PC running Vista or higher version of the operating system.An easy way to demonstrate this is using the built-in smartcard support in Windows for logon. In other words, Android is not in the picture for shuttling these bits, except for the supervisory actions of enabling/disabling card emulation mode.Īs the name implies, in this state the phone looks like a traditional smartcard.

Traffic is routed directly between SE and external NFC receiver– such as point of sale terminal, in the case of mobile payments with Google Wallet– without traversing the host operating system at all. To recap: in card emulation mode, the NFC controller is directly attached to the embedded secure element on the device. In this post we look at a surprising consequence of one of these: card emulation.

An earlier post discussed the three different modes supported by the NFC controller on Android devices.

Android nfc smart card reader