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NXP launches UCODE X for high-volume RAIN RFID applications

NXP Semiconductors has announced the new UCODE X, delivering industry-leading read and write sensitivity, flexible configurations, and the industry’s lowest power consumption. UCODE X supports smaller RAIN RFID labels, enabling a wide range of new, high-volume RAIN RFID applications, including retail, logistics, healthcare, and more.

Global regulations around product traceability and consumer safety continue to evolve, including the EU Digital Product Passport and U.S. FSMA 204. UCODE X provides the flexibility needed to meet demanding compliance standards, allowing critical product attributes, such as expiration dates, lot numbers, and recycling information, to be stored directly on the chip. This is done while ensuring the high performance needed to enable high-volume applications. This helps businesses stay ahead of regulatory mandates and increase transparency, while delivering advanced speed and accuracy to improve operational efficiency.

“With UCODE X, we’re expanding what’s possible in RAIN RFID,” said Ralf Kodritsch, Senior Director, UCODE RFID at NXP. “This chip combines our most advanced RF performance with flexible memory and configuration options, supporting smaller, higher performing RAIN RFID labels. This means even the most challenging items, including cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and food, can be tagged. It’s a major step forward for retailers, brands, and logistics providers looking to quickly increase RFID adoption.”

“Continuous overhead reading has reached a new level of maturity, and UCODE X is a key driver in that evolution,” said Danny Haak, Head of Product & Technology at Nedap. “Its industry-leading read and write sensitivity enables truly dependable, real-time inventory visibility. By integrating this capability into the Nedap Inventory Engine, we’re taking another major step from promising pilots to scalable, day-to-day operations, helping retailers prevent losses, optimize stock levels, and elevate the customer experience without adding complexity.”

“At Zebra, RFID technology allows us to create new ways of working that improve productivity and empower organizations,” said Michael Fein, Director of Product Management, RFID and ALT, Zebra Technologies. “UCODE X delivers the advanced read and write sensitivity that we need for our next-generation solutions and is designed using the GS1 G2V2 standard to expand the broad RAIN RFID ecosystem. This will help to accelerate RAIN RFID adoption across a variety of markets.”

UCODE X is engineered to improve speed and accuracy for applications such as inventory management, theft detection, expiration tracking, consumer self-checkout, and regulatory compliance across high-volume applications, such as retail, logistics, pharmaceuticals, and more. To maximize interoperability, UCODE X is built on a non-proprietary standard, GS1 Gen2V2, which is supported by a broad infrastructure of RAIN RFID reading and encoding devices. This includes a full implementation of the GS1 G2V2 Untraceable command to ensure consumer privacy.

UCODE X offers industry-leading read and write sensitivity, which supports faster encoding, faster inventory counts, and makes it easier to tag items that would otherwise be difficult to read. Featuring flexible memory and configuration options, UCODE X allows businesses to tailor the chip’s functionality to specific operational needs, simplifying stock management for the inlay and label supplier. UCODE X is designed to enable smaller inlays and reduce material consumption, making it a sustainable choice.