Pay phones?

Pay phones?

How long before we wave goodbye to plastic cards, and wave our phones to make payments instead? And how are Campus residents speeding the revolution?

Mobile payment goes mainstream

Some of us are already using smartphones for online payments, but there’s much more ahead. Mobile payment means using your phone to pay in ‘bricks and mortar’ shops, to save electronic receipts, and to discover special offers that pop up on the screen as you walk round a store.

And with big names like PayPal, Google, and Apple involved, mobile payment is set to expand and boom. PayPal alone expects its mobile payment transactions to reach over US$ 3 billion this year, up from US$ 25 million three years ago*.

Campus companies making it happen

NFC (Near Field Communication) – a technology with deep roots on the Campus – is a key enabler for this revolution. With an NFC-enabled phone, you just tap your phone on the store’s payment terminal and the transaction is done.

But if you store financial information like credit card numbers on a mobile device, you want it to be 100% safe! That’s where Campus resident, Intrinsic-ID, has a solution.

Its patented Hardware Intrinsic Security (HIS) technology is based on extracting a secret key directly from a device’s hardware. On a phone, every time you make a payment, the technology extracts the unique key (like an electronic fingerprint) which is used to secure the transaction but disappears immediately after.

“Other security solutions store keys on the phone at risk of being found by malware, viruses or hardware tampering. With our technology that’s simply not an issue,” explains Tony Picard, VP Business Development, Intrinsic-ID. The company’s new Confidentio product incorporates unique IP cores for key storage and cryptography and it can be embedded on the SIM card, on SD cards or even into chips on the phone’s motherboard such as application processors.

Another Campus resident, NXP Semiconductors is a leader in both NFC and secure ICs for applications like bank cards. It has licensed Intrinsic-ID’s Quiddikey™ solution to secure smart cards powered by its SmartMX ICs against cloning, tampering, theft-of-service and reverse engineering.

Find out more at: www.intrinsic-id.com   www.nxp.com

*http://www.kpmg.com/global/en/issuesandinsights/articlespublications/mobile-payments/2011-mobile-payments-outlook/pages/paypal-perspecitve.aspx

Photo caption: Intrinsic-ID demo of secure cloud storage and payments on mobile phones and tablets