So I’m still getting to grips with my FP4 but I’m really struggling to get the NFC to work reliably when paying in shops etc. some card readers just absolutely refuse to work at all with my phone and some are very picky about where I hold my phone… I never had this issue with my previous phone so I really don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or not 
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Yeah, I have a similar experience. The antenna is located in the middle, so what usually worked for me was holding the phone at the bottom and slowly getting closer until it gets registered.
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While I have no experience with this myself, I would guess the NFC antenna is the golden rectangle on the upper left of the back cover’s inside (spare parts shop photo):
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I think that are only the contacts which connect the antenna in the back cover with the phones mainboard.
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Isn’t it only the contact which connects to the main board? I believe the actual antenna is the large black area. You can see it’s connected to the golden rectangle using thin black wires. Nonetheless, you definitely need to aim way lower than where the cameras are.
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I guess you guys are right. 
The corresponding receiving part is probably the two silvery golden pocks on the camera module’s bottom right here:
https://shop.fairphone.com/media/catalog/product/cache/b752d78484639b19641a8560800d919d/p/_/p_5b_main_camera_back.jpg
Originally, I was expecting a more pointed area because the NFC symbol on the FP3 back cover (mis?)suggests so, but then again I found myself that the (presumable) NFC antenna on a debit card appears to be much larger than a mere NFC symbol:
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I use a Yubikey and daily I use NFC. But from time to time NFC just stops working on the FP4. The issue also happens when using Google Pay. Please address this problem at FP support so they can put it on their todo list.
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My only NFC experience on the FP4 was trying to read my ID card. And that was really not easy to do. In fact, I had already pretty much given up when it suddenly read the data after all. The card had to be placed in a very specific center place behind the phone to get a read. No idea if it’s the phone’s or the card’s fault, though. 
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Just in case anyone is using a case, this was discussed RE the FP3
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I haven’t tried Google Pay with FP4 yet but reading NFC cards works without problems, even with the protective case.
I used this app for testing:
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It works about 9 out of 10 times, but when using NFC a lot, like I do. Then issues arrise a few times a week. I guess it’s a software issue. When it fails a reboot is needed, or a restart of an NFC app such as Yubico Authenticator.
I connect my Sony Bluetooth headphones (WH-1000XM3) using NFC 1-2 times a day, and I have to restart NFC via the status bar almost every time that I do that.
When it works, it connects in seconds, and I don’t have to hold the headphones at a very specific location, and it doesn’t matter if the case is on or off the phone.
When it doesn’t work, it’s simply that. I can move the headphones around, try different spots, but it simply does not work. Only an NFC restart helps.
I thought it’s maybe the battery optimization, so I’ve set the “Nfc Service” to “Not optimized”, but the issue persists.
Did anyone find a more reliable fix than restart NFC everytime you want to use it?
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I don’t think there is a definitive solution. Please make sure to #contactsupport. The more people report this, the more likely it is that it will be fixed.
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I haven’t noticed this problem in the first week of my new FP4. Do you guys still encounter this issue?
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Yep, sometimes a payment doesn’t go through and the phone vibrates like crazy (with a message “Phone moved too fast”). In most cases it’s fine, but definitely not 100%.
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That sounds like a different issue than I was having. I sometimes had to kill the app Yubico Authenticator because it couldn’t detect my Yubikey via NFC. Google Pay also had this issue a few times. I haven’t used Google Pay a lot the last week.
However, I wasn’t able to reproduce the Yubikey issue in the last week. I sometimes also have issues that I’m too fast with the NFC connection. But I also had this with my old phone. NFC needs some time. I’m using the official protective case by the way.
@NiceColdRum do you still experience this issue? Or is it similar to what @Razem said, that the connection needs some more time?
Yesterday the NFC didn’t work (at all), I had to launch the app that’s the default for NFC communication by hand before it worked again. This only happens with an uptime of about 24 hours. So maybe some process crashes or goes into deep suspend after a while. I didn’t have these issues with my old phone (Android 9-12).
Can you clarify what’s actually happening? Does NFC turn off by itself and you basically have to turn it back on? Or was it turned on but didn’t work unless you opened some app that uses NFC? None of this has happened to me so far, except for weird cases like NFC deactivates itself automatically - #3 by Razem.