How Xiaomi Turned NFC Into a Seamless Digital Door Card – Design Secrets Revealed

Xiaomi phone NFC is part of the Xiaomi Wallet innovative payment service, launched in 2015, now supporting three scenarios: bus and subway fare, door card access, and bank card transactions.

The Xiaomi Wallet door‑card feature lets users open doors by tapping their phone, offering three modes: simulating a physical card, interfacing with smart locks, and using a blank online card. It supports four card designs for home, unit, community, and company use.

Within the company, the door‑card is widely used; when an employee forgets their work badge, simply placing the phone on a reader grants entry.

In August 2019, with the digitization of employee badges, Xiaomi distinguished internal employee cards from external door‑card services. A visual upgrade project was launched with a one‑and‑half‑week design cycle, involving designers from multiple business units to avoid disrupting regular projects.

The design direction centered on Xiaomi employees, using four core business themes—mobile, IoT, cloud services, and internet—as the design foundation. The challenge was to visually convey Xiaomi’s product characteristics and the youthful energy of its staff, leading to concepts around the mascot Mi Rabbit, youth, and technology.

The Mi Rabbit concept aimed to deliver an emotional visual experience to employees, but the final visual emphasized vibrant colors and tech‑styled lines, integrating the four core departments, highlighting business features, strengthening structure, reducing bulk, and enhancing light‑shadow dynamics for a focused visual impact.

The four card designs aim to convey a sense of technology and youthful vitality to colleagues.

Finally, thanks are extended to the talented designers from Xiaomi Financial Services: Zhang Xu, Jiang Yi, Chen Nian, Ye Zuhong, Pan Lin, Zhang Lili, Yu Zheli, Yang Shaoqiang, An Ziqi, and Sheng Fenfen, who balanced their own projects while contributing urgently to this design effort; further optimization and creative presentations are anticipated.