Near field communication flex circuit

A customer terminal for processing payment information received via near-field communications (NFC) from a NFC payment device, the customer terminal comprising:

• a customer terminal circuit board comprising:
• a processing element configured to send outgoing payment messages and receive incoming payment messages, wherein the processing element is further configured to process the payment information based on the outgoing and incoming payment messages;
• a NFC transceiver in communication with the processing element to receive the outgoing payment messages from the processing element, modulate the data based on a carrier signal to generate an outgoing modulated digital signal, receive an incoming digital signal, and process the incoming digital signal to generate the incoming payment messages;
• an NFC receive circuit, wherein the NFC circuit comprises:
• an amplifier circuit configured to amplify an analog data signal;
• and
• a comparator configured to receive the amplified analog data signal from the amplifier circuit, and to digitize the amplified analog data signal to generate the incoming digital signal;
• and
• a NFC flex circuit, wherein at least a portion of the NFC flex circuit comprises flexible circuit elements, the NFC flex circuit comprising:
• a NFC transmission circuit, comprising:
• a power amplifier configured to receive the outgoing modulated digital signal from the NFC transceiver and to amplify the outgoing modulated digital signal to output an outgoing modulated analog signal;
• a tuning circuit coupled to the power amplifier to tune the outgoing modulated analog signal to generate a tuned outgoing signal;
• and
• an antenna configured to transmit the tuned outgoing signal and to receive an inductively coupled signal;
• a flex amplifier circuit configured to receive the inductively coupled signal from the antenna and amplify the inductively coupled signal to output the analog data signal;
• one or more transmit traces coupled to the customer terminal circuit board and the NFC transmission circuit, wherein the outgoing modulated digital signals are transmitted from the NFC transceiver to the power amplifier via the one or more transmit traces;
• and
• a receive trace coupled to the customer terminal circuit board and the flex amplifier circuit, wherein the analog data signal is provided from the flex amplifier circuit to the NFC receive circuit via the receive trace, wherein the one or more transmit traces and the receive trace are flexible circuit elements, and wherein the one or more transmit traces and the receive trace extend a predetermined distance between the customer terminal circuit board and the NFC transmission circuit and the flex amplifier circuit, wherein the predetermined distance is at least 2.5% of the propagation-medium-specific wavelength of the carrier signal.