CellTrust Corporation has announced that it is preparing patent-pending, NFC-provisioning APIs using SecureSMS, in anticipation of NFC technology rollout which will begin next year.
NFC (Near Field Communication) is a short-range wireless communication standard that bundles a contactless chip with a contactless reader inside the mobile device. With NFC technology, consumers can simply wave or tap their phone within a few inches of a reader to transfer information to their mobile phone or to complete a mobile payment or transaction.
Sean Moshir, chairman and CEO of CellTrust said: “CellTrust’s SecureSMS NFC solution will make it easy for carriers and banks to implement and integrate NFC. We believe the cost savings for mobile operators will be substantial, since they will be utilizing their existing SMSC infrastructure.”
CellTrust’s technology addresses the security gaps that exist with basic SMS, paving the way for NFC-enabled mobile devices to be securely used as an “electronic wallet.”
Designed to make life much easier for the end-user, provisioning NFC will require the carrier to send sensitive and confidential information to the mobile subscriber’s handset. While a few methods exist to provision NFC, CellTrust believes SMS is the optimal choice because it uses the mobile communications control channel, which is separate from voice and data and operates regardless of the voice or data being used. The control channel has high resiliency, low bandwidth requirements and was designed for carriers to send specific commands and instructions to the handset via SMS. It is important to note that standard SMS is not secure and can be spoofed. Provisioning NFC with CellTrust’s SecureSMS APIs addresses spoofing with a fully authenticated, government-grade, highly encrypted, tamper-proof process, which also enables message sizes up to 5,000 characters.
“At Juniper Research we forecast that 1 in 6 subscribers globally will have NFC phones by 2014. NFC is all about ease and convenience for users although the first question from users usually relates to security. This announcement by CellTrust is an important development to quell peoples’ security concerns and enable the rollout of NFC enabled mobile wallets,” said Howard Wilcox, Senior Analyst, Juniper Research.
NFC has the potential to be a significant, pervasive technology, but the lack of NFC chips in existing handsets and security concerns have held the industry back from wide-scale integration of mobile payments on NFC-equipped devices. CellTrust’s NFC solution could be a key driver in finally bringing mobile payments to NFC devices and unlocking the market potential for this technology.
CellTrust’s SecureSMS NFC APIs use Short Message Service Center (SMSC) and allow carriers to use their existing investment in SMS infrastructure while provisioning NFC, therefore a new NFC platform is not required. Carriers can easily integrate with the SecureSMS APIs and send secure commands and instructions to the handset to provision NFC with all types of transactions, including adding and deleting credit cards.
SecureSMS also gives mobile network operators an added level of security for OTA (Over-The-Air) configuration and provisioning of mobile devices compared to today’s standard SMS infrastructure, which is not tamper proof and can be spoofed.
CellTrust Prepares NFC Provisioning APIs Using SecureSMS
