Washable RFID Tags and RFiD THREADS®
GCN's washable RFID tags are built into or attached to the product and survive 100–200 wash/dry cycles across a 0–200°C range — garments, footwear, accessories, homewares and toys. Built to GS1 Standards, they bulk-read hundreds or thousands of items at once, with no line of sight needed, and connect straight into the GCN App or external platforms via API.
WHY RFID VS QR CODE
GCN's washable RFIDs survive 100-200 wash cycles and enables bulk scanning (eg. scan hundreds of items in a box/pile at once), whereas a QR code is a printed/woven element that can fade, tear, or be removed, and can only ever be scanned one at a time - both QR Codes and NFCs are are single scan tools only.
QR codes, NFC tools cannot deliver efficient, traceable data capture at scale across global circular value chains for years.
RFID vs QR — why both exist. They're not competing technologies; they solve different problems.
QR Code
Gives a person access to a DPP. Needs line of sight, scans one product at a time — built for consumer engagement.
RFID
Lets a business process the physical products behind that DPP at industrial scale — built for B2B.
End-of-life
Tags can be recovered, reset and resold into products that don't need full washability — homewares, footwear, mattresses.
RFID TAGS AND RFiD THREADS®
GCN tags carry only an identifier — no product, ownership, or certification data is stored on the physical tag itself. All Digital Product Passport data lives in GCN's access-controlled backend, so a scanned tag reveals nothing on its own; what's returned depends entirely on who's asking and what they're authorised to see.
Washable RFID tags are robust to withstand high/low temperatures, washing and drying cycles zero to 2000c / 3920F.
Washable for 100-200 washes.
Flexible, strong and invisibly integrated into textile-based products including garments, footwear, accessories, homewares, mattresses, toys etc. Stays with the product for a full lifecycle.
Tags hold a "double security" TID - a chip-level physical serial number for anti-clone security.
Clients can link their GS1 GTINs - see additional details below.
Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) readability. RFID readers bulk read hundreds/thousands of threads at once at high-speed without the need for line-of-sight scanning. RFiDs are bulk scanned by a connected UHF RFID reader to connect to the GCN App and - by request - external software via a API "digital bridges".
TAG OPTIONS
1. GCN's washable RFID tags use the Impinj M830 chip
a. Sewing — mechanically stitched into the garment, our established method for long-term industrial wear
b. Heat Press — heat-activated bonding, suited to production lines already using heat-press equipment
2. RFiD THREADS® are stand-alone RFID "tags", separated long fine metal "threads". They are not connected as one long thread as this would be unnecessary and wasteful.
RFID packages start at a minimum of 100 RFIDs.
Enquire about a DPP Package for full specifications and pricing at your required volume.
PRODUCT IDENTIFIERS: GS1 OR GCN'S OWN SYSTEM
Every product on GCN needs a unique identifier — the number the RFID tag actually carries. We support two paths, so no brand is locked out based on the standards body they belong to.
If you already hold GS1 GTINs, GCN supports GS1 Digital Link — your existing product numbers can be used directly, encoded onto your RFID tags in the standard GS1 format.
GS1 membership is not required to use GCN. Many MSMEs don't hold GS1 membership, and the cost of joining isn't always proportionate to a smaller brand's scale. For these brands, GCN assigns its own unique product identifier — every item still receives a genuine, traceable, per-unit identity, fully usable across GCN's entire platform (Authenticate, Downstream, Sorting, End-of-Life), regardless of GS1 status.
In short: use your existing GTIN if you have one, or let GCN handle identification for you if you don't. Either way, every product gets a real, working identifier — accessibility for smaller brands is included.
Tag Architecture and Consumer Privacy — Why GCN Tags Carry No On-Tag Data
The core design choice
GCN's RFID tags carry only two things on the physical chip:
TID (Tag Identifier) — a factory-burned, unchangeable serial number set by the chip manufacturer (Impinj) at the point of manufacture.
EPC (Electronic Product Code) — a short identifier that GCN writes once, during provisioning, and which acts purely as a pointer/lookup key.
Neither of these fields contains product data, ownership history, material composition, certification records, or any other Digital Product Passport content. That information lives entirely in GCN's backend (Supabase, Frankfurt), accessed only when someone scans the tag and the app looks up the corresponding record.
This is a deliberate architectural choice, not an incidental one — and it happens to be reinforced by the M830 chip specifically having zero user memory available, which makes "writing data onto the tag" not just discouraged by design, but physically impossible on that chip.
1. The tag itself reveals nothing if intercepted. Anyone with an RFID reader in range can read a passive tag's EPC and TID — that's inherent to how RAIN RFID works, and no amount of encryption on our end changes that fact. But if the tag carries no actual data, an intercepted read yields only an opaque identifier, not a product's history, materials, certifications, ownership, or any personal or commercial information. The identifier is meaningless without access to GCN's backend, where GCN controls exactly who can see what.
2. Access control lives in one place, not scattered across every physical tag. If data were written onto tags directly, protecting it would mean controlling every physical tag in circulation — impossible once a garment leaves a facility. By keeping all substantive data in the backend, GCN can apply role-based access, audit logs, and permission changes centrally, and can update or revoke access without needing to touch a single physical tag.
3. Nothing is "leaked forward" as a garment changes hands. A tag that only carries an identifier doesn't accumulate a readable history on the object itself. Downstream holders, resellers, or recyclers scanning the tag see only what GCN's backend permissions allow them to see at that moment — not a static, unerasable record baked into the tag from manufacture.
4. This aligns with data minimisation principles. Storing the minimum necessary identifier on the physical object, rather than the underlying data itself, is consistent with data minimisation as a privacy principle — collecting/storing only what's needed for the stated purpose (identification and lookup), not more.
What this is not
This is not encryption, and it doesn't prevent someone from reading the EPC/TID itself — those are inherently readable by any compatible reader in range, by design of the RAIN RFID standard. The privacy protection comes from what's absent from the tag (no substantive data) combined with backend-side access control, not from making the identifier unreadable.
