INSIDE's NFC Chip Powers Handsets In Pay-Buy-Mobile Trials

INSIDE Contactless will play a significant role in pushing forward the "Pay-Buy-Mobile" initiative launched by the GSM Association at last year's Mobile World Congress conference. The company's MicroRead near-field communications (NFC) chip will power payment transactions in most of the handsets to be used in the "Pay-Buy-Mobile" trials. Over the next few months, 12 mobile operators will get the trials underway in Australia, France, Ireland, Korea, Malaysia, Norway, The Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey, and the U.S. Under the initiative, consumers will be able to use their cell phones to pay for goods and services in shops and restaurants. Such networks are already up-and-running in Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey, GSMA spokesperson David Pringle said. Since the transactions depend on a SIM card as well as near-field communications, INSIDE's technology will allow mobile operators to deploy SIM-based applications through a direct link between the NFC chip and the SIM card, via the standard SWP protocol. "We were able to anticipate the standards and produce the first NFC chip with an SWP interface," Philippe Martineau, executive vice president of the NFC Business Line at INSIDE, said in a statement. INSIDE's MicroRead technology can behave as a router in the phone rather than a simple modem, establishing secure connections between different devices. It can also communicate with existing contactless payment systems. The trial in Korea, led by Korea Telecom Freetel (KTF), employed the MicroRead chip in phones made by participants LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics. Turkcell is operating the trial currently underway in Turkey. According to preliminary research from the GSMA, two-thirds of 2,574 consumers surveyed in 17 countries said they would use the service to make payments within two years of it becoming available. When GSMA announced the initiative last year, pay-by-mobile was already popular, with 12 million mobile payment-enabled handsets in circulation and 80,000 terminal payment machines in shops and restaurants. The initiative has since expanded to include 35 mobile operators — including Nokia and Motorola — and 1.3 billion customers worldwide.