Aliro is a vendor-agnostic standard for digital access control working over NFC, Bluetooth LE, or UWB

Managed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, Aliro is a smart lock/access control standard that works over NFC, Bluetooth LE, or UWB and is designed to be vendor-agnostic. While Matter is designed for Smart Home applications, Aliro specifically targets access control, and both aim to address market fragmentation. It was brought to my attention when we wrote about the Nordic nRF54L15 Tag, but we had already mentioned it for chips from other vendors such as STMicro (ST64UWB) and Qualcomm (FastConnect 8800), as well as earlier wireless MCUs from Nordic Semi such as the nRF54LM20A and nRF54LM20B. It appears to be adopted across the industry, so let's have a closer look. Aliro 1.0 was first released in February 2026 with the following highlights: Leverages existing smartphones and wearables Framework utilizes asymmetric cryptography to ensure secure and trusted interactions between user devices and readers Integration with digital wallets from Apple, Google, Samsung, etc...