prEN IEC 63652-2:2026

Scope

The NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) specification defines a message encapsulation format to exchange information between two NFC Forum Devices. NDEF is a lightweight, binary message format that can be used to encapsulate one or more application-defined payloads of arbitrary type and size into a single message construct. Each payload is described by a type, a length, and an optional identifier. Type identifiers can be URIs, MIME media types, or NFC-specific types. This latter format permits compact identification of well known types commonly used in NFC Forum applications, or self-allocation of a name space for organizations that wish to use it for their own NFC-specific purposes. The NDEF Payload Length is an unsigned integer that indicates the number of octets in the payload. A compact, NDEF short-record layout is provided for very small payloads. The optional NDEF Payload Identifier enables association of multiple payloads and crossreferencing between them. NDEF Payloads can include nested NDEF Messages or chains of linked chunks of length unknown at the time the data is generated. NDEF is strictly a message format, which provides no concept of a connection or of a logical circuit, nor does it address head-of-line problems.