Just a few months after INSIDE Secure gave its first proof of concept of NFC technology at CARTES 2011, it took another big step forward by partnering with Sunward Telecom at the Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) to demonstrate a new NFC SIM card innovation.
The NFC SIM card product developed by Sunward Telecom using core technology from INSIDE can be used even in a non-NFC mobile phone to achieve an industry-standard, 4-cm proximity transaction performance. It is ISO 14443 and EMVCo compliant, according to company officials.
It's a win-win for both companies. INSIDE is the first to make a non-NFC mobile phone conform to industry standards using the NFC SIM card innovation while Sunward Telecom can market NFC SIM card products using INSIDE Secure's core technology.
“The NFC SIM card we are developing with INSIDE has all the components, including the antenna, embedded in the SIM card, and will allow mobile service providers and their customers to conduct contactless payments and other proximity transactions using NFC without purchasing a new phone or other alternative NFC device,” said Eddie Kwok, CEO at Sunward Telecom, in a press release.
When the SIM card is inserted into a non-NFC mobile phone, it is automatically upgraded and can perform mobile payment and other transactions. China and other markets with a large installed base of legacy mobile phones stand to benefit by the new SIM card innovation and officials believe that this will trigger faster adoption of NFC card-emulation applications
According to Bertrand Moussel, executive vice president, EMEA/LATAM sales at INSIDE Secure, Near Field Communication technology, which is fast gaining acceptance in major Chinese banks and with mobile service operators, will soon be bringing new applications and business models to customers in China.
In other industry news, INSIDE Secure introduced the VaultIC160, a memory-enriched NFC-based security solution designed for embedding into high-end consumer or industrial products that are often targeted by counterfeiters and cloners. The new chip packs 14 Kbytes of accessible programmable non-volatile (NV) memory in addition to 1.5 Kbytes of NV memory used to hold authentication certificate information. This increased memory allows the consumer goods vendor, or any other supplier incorporating the chip into their product, to store product-related information on the chip such as pictures, recipes, customs forms or manufacturing history.
Edited by Tammy Wolf