Apple showed off many new features of the new iPhone during its “Gather round” event earlier this month, but there’s one major update that didn’t make it to the main stage. It was an update to the iPhone’s NFC (near field communication) support, the tech that lets you scan your iPhone to checkout through Apple Pay.
Before iOS 12, users of NFC-equipped iPhones needed to open an app to access this feature. But the day after its event, Apple told developers that iOS 12 would support NFC “background tag reading” on the new iPhones, meaning once these iPhones are unlocked after booting up they constantly scan for NFC tags.
With the new NFC implementation, as long as an iPhone XS or XR is within 1.6-inches of an NFC tag, it displays a notification you can tap to open an app or link in Safari.
