NFC connectivity is to play a major role in the delivery of a new generation of cordless kitchen appliances which work in conjunction with wireless power transmitter hotspots built into kitchen work surfaces to replace the need for traditional plugs and cables... More
Indonesia’s central bank says it has now completed the development of QRIS, an EMV-compliant national QR Code Indonesian Standard for mobile payments... More
Commercial Bank launches ComBank Q+ — Sri Lanka’s first QR based payment app under LankaQR — Commercial Bank of Ceylon — “The Commercial Bank of Ceylon (CBSL) has launched ComBank Q+ — the first Quick Response (QR) based payment app to be launched under LankaQR… LankaQR is the national QR standard for local currency payments introduced by the CBSL.”
Two new resolutions passed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) will see global adoption of RFID for airport baggage tracking and a move from passengers using paper documents to a single biometric ID they can use to prove their identity at any airport anywhere in the world... More
Developing cross-border ticketing in public transport networks — Intelligent Transport — “Based on the concept of account-based ticketing, nationally differing ticketing systems can be linked without the need to change existing national standards. Key to the success of this is letting different systems coexist, but while introducing an interoperable layer that can connect the different existing national systems.”
Japan to unify mobile payment codes, enlisting Chinese giants — Nikkei Asian Review — “Line and Alibaba Group Holding are among five major internet businesses from Japan and China that will standardize QR codes that are scanned to make payments via smartphones in Japan, Nikkei has learned. The others joining this undertaking are online flea market operator Mercari and mobile carrier NTT Docomo from Japan and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay from China.”
GlobalPlatform has published two new standards designed to provide chip, device and firmware developers with an open, standardized way to load and manage firmware in a secure and isolated area of a device’s system-on-a-chip (SoC)... More
W3C approves WebAuthn as the web standard for password-free logins — VentureBeat — “The specification lets users log into online accounts using biometrics, mobile devices, and/or Fido security keys. WebAuthn is supported by Android and Windows 10. On the browser side, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge all added support last year. Apple has supported WebAuthn in preview versions of Safari since December.”
PCI SPoC and Contactless standards: What to expect in 2019 — PCI Security Standards Council — “The aim is to develop security requirements for solutions that enable a merchant’s COTS [Commercial off-the-shelf] device to accept contactless payments without the need for a dongle or other type of peripheral reader by leveraging the native NFC capabilities inherent to a COTS phone or tablet.”
A total of 5.5bn chips using GlobalPlatform’s secure element specifications were deployed in 2017, up 1.5bn on the previous year, the security standards body has announced... More
Four NFC Forum technical specifications speed and enable new NFC services — NFC Forum — “The Connection Handover Technical Specification 1.4 allows users to define additional specific services when two devices are paired together using other wireless communication technologies, such as Bluetooth or WLAN by a tap of an NFC-enabled device. The Personal Health Device Communication (PHDC) Technical Specification 1.2 defines the exchange of ISO/IEEE 11073 messages often used for personal healthcare devices such as heart, blood pressure and glucose monitors. Also, updates were made to the NFC Digital Protocol Technical Specification 2.1 and NFC Controller Interface (NCI) Technical Specification 2.1.”
GlobalPlatform enhances secure element deployment for payment-enabled wearables — GlobalPlatform — “Wearables such as smart rings and smart wristbands are bridging the gap between simple cards and feature-rich smartphones by enabling consumers to pay, unlock and travel with a tap,” comments Gil Bernabeu, technical director of GlobalPlatform. “This new configuration standardizes all of this, saving implementers time and money, increasing revenue opportunities and enriching the experience for consumers.”
GlobalPlatform simplifies implementation of standardized IoT device security — GlobalPlatform — “GlobalPlatform, the standard for secure digital services and devices, has published a configuration that simplifies the implementation of secure element (SE) specifications for the protection of internet of things (IoT) devices… The configuration supports root of trust (RoT) device identity, the protection of critical assets, state-of-the-art AES cryptography for device management and authentication, allowing automatic enrolment to online cloud services.”
PARTNER NEWS: NXP has launched two new NFC tags that incorporate both product protection and channel authentication security features, enabling brands to take advantage of the tag reading capabilities of both Android and iOS devices to roll out NFC-based customer communication and product authentication services at scale... More
Central bank to develop settlement service to expand mobile cash card payment — Yonhap News — “The South Korean central bank said Tuesday that it will adopt a new mobile cash card settlement service starting next year in a bid to expand simplified mobile payments in the country. A council on financial information by the Bank of Korea (BOK) and local banks decided to develop technological standards and a mobile application for the new service that enables sellers to receive money directly from the buyer’s bank account.”
PARTNER NEWS: STMicroelectronics has 10 developer kits for its new contactless payments ‘in a box’ reference design available for NFC World readers to request free of charge... More
Opinion of the European Banking Authority on the implementation of the RTS on SCA and CSC — European Banking Authority — “The regulatory technical standards (RTS) on strong customer authentication (SCA) and common and secure communication (CSC) underpin the new security requirements under PSD2… The EBA has decided to issue an opinion in order to respond to a number of the numerous queries the EBA and competent authorities have received from market participants and aims to provide clarity on the implementation of certain aspects of the RTS that were published.”
PARTNER NEWS: STMicroelectronics has released a contactless payment terminal reference design that can be used to quickly build EMV-compliant POS terminals “by making the exhaustive EMVCo certification process easier and faster than ever before.”... More
STMicroelectronics’ NFC technology chosen to distinguish TCL Communication’s Alcatel 3V smartphone through outstanding contactless user experience — STMicroelectronics — PARTNER NEWS — “ST’s technology ensures robust connectivity for fast and reliable contactless payments, e-ticket transactions, peer-to-peer data transfer, and emerging use cases including interacting with ‘physical web’ objects like smart posters or store shelves. Superior RF performance also helped TCL Communication to streamline certification to mandatory stringent EMVCo, GSMA and NFC Forum standards for handsets.”
A new white paper that looks in-depth at Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology, the architecture and principles underpinning its operation and how it can be used to secure a variety of mobile wallet and IoT applications is now available to download free of charge from the NFC World Knowledge Centre... More