10 Places RFID Is Already Working That You’d Never Expect

Ask most people what RFID is used for and they’ll say warehouse tracking, or maybe access control. Both are right. But the technology does considerably more than that and has been doing so for longer than most people realise.

The same core principle applies in every case: attach a tag to something, give it a unique ID, and you can track, identify, or interact with it automatically, without line of sight, without batteries in most cases, and at a distance that would make a barcode scanner useless. That flexibility is why RFID turns up in some genuinely unexpected places.

Here are ten real-world examples, several of which involve our own work.

1. Tracking pebbles on a beach to manage coastal erosion

Coastal Partners, who manage flood and erosion risk on behalf of five local authorities along England’s south coast, embed passive RFID tags inside individual pebbles taken from the beach. The tagged pebbles, known as tracer pebbles, are positioned along a stretch of coastline and their location logged using GPS. Teams then carry out regular surveys by walking the beach with a specialist RFID scanner, which logs each tag’s ID and GPS position automatically as it detects them.

The data shows which direction sediment is moving, how fast, and how wave action is redistributing material along the shoreline. That information feeds directly into beach management decisions and coastal defence design, something aerial photography and topographic surveys alone couldn’t provide.

Coastal Partners have carried out over ten studies using this method and currently have more than 9,500 tracer pebbles deployed across multiple sites. CoreRFID supplies the encapsulated low frequency glass tags used in the programme, specified to survive prolonged submersion and the mechanical forces of a working beach.

On average, 72% of tags are detected over any two-week period, with more than 95% detected at least once. For passive tags without batteries, left in a hostile outdoor environment, that’s a strong result.

2. Making sure graduates get the right photograph

Tempest Photography, a specialist in the education sector, photographs thousands of graduates each year at ceremonies across the UK. Matching the right photograph to the right student, across hundreds of people in identical gowns, was an administrative headache.

The solution was to sew an RFID laundry tag into the hem of each ceremonial gown. When the photograph is taken, the tag is scanned to link that image to that specific gown, and therefore that student. CoreRFID supplied UHF RFID laundry tags designed to survive repeated washing, drying, and ironing, since the gowns are hired out and returned many times over.

The tag is invisible to the wearer and requires no action from them. The matching happens automatically, and the right photographs reach the right people.

3. Giving museum visitors a personalised experience via a ring

The Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid (the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision) in Hilversum wanted to give visitors an interactive experience across 15 themed pavilions, with no fixed route and content tailored to the individual. CoreRFID supplied the tags and readers used to make it work.

Each visitor was given a ring containing a custom RFID tag, used as a key to unlock exhibits as they moved through the exhibition. At each reader point, the ring identified the visitor and triggered age-appropriate content, including material selected for children. The system logged which exhibits each visitor saw and in what order, enabling the museum to email personalised follow-up content afterwards and to analyse visitor behaviour patterns for future planning.

Younger visitors in particular engaged strongly with the system. The ring format made the interaction feel natural rather than transactional.

4. Replacing disposable coffee cups

Around 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups are thrown away in the UK each year. Re-use schemes exist, but most require customers to download an app, register their details, pay a deposit, and then claim it back through a separate process. The friction defeats the purpose.

Recirculate Systems (formerly Delete Cups), developed by Alasdair Hood and his team using CoreRFID equipment, takes a different approach. Each reusable cup contains an RFID chip. When the barista takes payment, they scan the cup and the chip is linked to the transaction. When the used cup is returned to any collection point, the chip is detected automatically, and the deposit is refunded to the customer’s account without any further action required on their part.

No app. No queuing. No manual logging. The system was trialled successfully at two cafés in Essex, and the company has since grown across the UK and Europe.

The tags are robust enough to withstand dishwasher cycles and contact with hot liquids; getting a passive RFID tag to survive commercial dishwashers is not a straightforward specification.

5. Recording every shot in a round of golf

GAME, a sports technology company, wanted to bring the kind of detailed performance analysis seen in professional broadcasting to amateur golfers. The result was a system that records every club used, every swing made, yardage hit, and a range of other performance metrics, then lets players compare data, share it socially, and compete over time or across courses.

CoreRFID specified and sourced the custom RFID tags used in the system. Each tag is attached to the shaft of a golf club and identified by a handheld device worn by the player, which uses an RFID reader alongside an accelerometer, GPS, and electronic compass to capture performance data at the point of each shot.

The tags had to be precisely specified to fit the top of a club’s grip and tuned to provide the optimal read range when used with the GAME device. Getting the antenna geometry right for a tag that needed to work on the metal shaft of a golf club, without interfering with the player’s grip? Standard tags don’t solve that problem, but custom development did.

6. Running: from community clubs to marathon finish lines

RFID has found two distinct roles in running, at opposite ends of the scale.

NikeTown Runners

The NikeTown Runners Club runs weekly from Nike’s Regent Street store in London. Members are issued with custom RFID tags housed in a branded rubberised casing that fastens to their shoelaces. Each time a member arrives for a run, they check in by placing their foot under a reader at the kiosk, confirming them as a participant on that night’s route.

The system serves a practical purpose from a safety perspective, giving Nike staff an accurate record of who is running on which route each night, with emergency contact details linked to each tag ID. It also connects each runner’s participation to their NikePlus profile, enabling the digital community side of the programme.

CoreRFID developed the custom tags and housing, taking the design from approval to delivery of 10,000 branded units in five weeks. The housing was engineered to survive a shoelace taking 10,000 impacts over a seven-mile run.

Marathon timing

If you’ve run a road race in the last decade, the timing chip in your bib was almost certainly a passive RFID tag. When you crossed a timing mat at the start line, a finish line, or a split point, the mat sent a radio frequency signal that activated the chip, which responded with a unique ID linked to your registration. The system logged the exact timestamp.

This is now the standard approach for events of every size, from local 5Ks to the world’s largest marathons. The LA Marathon uses RAIN RFID across its entire field. The system gives every runner an accurate individual chip time regardless of where they started in the pack and produces full split data at every checkpoint.

Most runners have no idea the chip in their bib is RFID. They just know their time is accurate.

7. Tracking over 2,300 hire bicycles for the NHS

CoreRFID supplies RFID readers and tags to Brompton Bike Hire to track more than 2,300 bicycles available for rent across London. Each Brompton bicycle carries an RFID tag that enables readers to track and measure usage across the fleet.

The project included the Wheels for Heroes scheme, which offered NHS employees free bicycle rental as an alternative to public transport during the Covid-19 pandemic. The scheme was designed to continue beyond the pandemic as part of a broader commitment to active and sustainable travel for NHS staff.

Brompton bicycles are valuable assets. RFID provides the tracking accuracy needed to manage a fleet of that size efficiently across multiple locations in a busy city.

8. Cutting 400 hours of document auditing down to four

A Magic Circle law firm with more than 2,000 staff and tens of thousands of files across multiple floors at its London headquarters had previously used barcodes to track documents. Auditing the repository required the document management team to physically remove each file and scan it individually, a process that took around 400 hours of staff time every quarter.

CoreRFID replaced the barcode system with UHF RFID. The team can now scan the entire repository using a combination of mobile and fixed readers, with information relayed directly to the database. The time required to carry out a full audit dropped from 400 hours to four, saving 200 working days in the first year alone.

When a folder hasn’t been returned, staff scan the offices with handheld readers or a mobile phone running an RFID app, which can detect tags within a two to three metre range.

The system also reduced the audit period from three months to an hour and gave the firm greater confidence in its security procedures by making it possible to detect when a file is leaving the building.

9. Tracking livestock from birth to slaughter

RFID ear tags have been mandatory for sheep and goats in the UK for years, under EU-derived livestock traceability legislation. From 2027, mandatory electronic identification using RFID will extend to all newborn calves in England, following a Defra announcement. Scotland has expressed a preference for UHF, while England is moving to low frequency, with the industry working to ensure interoperability across the UK.

Each animal carries a unique tag ID that travels with it from birth through the food supply chain. If a disease outbreak occurs, the affected animals can be traced and quarantined quickly. The data also supports breeding records, health monitoring, and milk production tracking on farm.

It’s one of the largest-scale deployments of RFID anywhere, running largely invisibly across British agriculture.

10. Scanning an entire basket of clothes at once at the till

Every item of clothing sold by Uniqlo carries a RAIN RFID tag embedded in its price label. At self-checkout, customers place their entire basket into a bin. The kiosk reads every tag simultaneously, totals the purchase, and displays it on screen. No individual scanning. No barcodes. No waiting.

The same system runs from factory to store. Uniqlo’s RAIN RFID deployment has reportedly tripled inventory storage efficiency in their warehouses and achieved close to 100% read accuracy across their stock. Smart mirrors in store use the same readers to show product information and availability when customers hold items near them.

Customers refer to it on social media as ‘retail magic.’ The technology is actually 30 years old.

The common thread

What is RFID used for? In each of these cases, the answer is the same thing in a different form: linking a physical object to a digital record, automatically, accurately, and without requiring human intervention at the point of identification.

Whether the object is a pebble on a beach, a coffee cup, a golf club, or a graduation gown, the underlying capability is the same. What changes is the tag format, the frequency, the fixing method, and the software that does something useful with the data.

If you have an application in mind and want to know whether RFID could work for it, we’re happy to talk it through. Get in touch.