The News

Inside chosen for world's first NFC-enabled M-payment rollout

18/09/2007

INSIDE’s MicroRead® offers a SIM-based approach for the NFC Ecosystem
  
Aix en Provence, France, Sep 18th, 2007 -- INSIDE Contactless, a world leader of contactless semiconductor chips, today announced that its MicroRead® platform has been selected as the preferred NFC chip for China’s Chongqing Province Contactless mobile payment commercial deployment.   With a population of more than 31 million, this initiative also represents the first large-scale commercial mobile payment deployment in the world.
Since June of this year, INSIDE has worked successfully with China Mobile Chongqing Company, Just In Mobile to deliver 2kpcs NFC phone-embedded MicroRead chip.  This is the first mobile contactless payment project to link a Chinese mobile operator with banks in a manner that enables Chinese consumers to pay for goods in several thousand merchant locations using their mobile phones. 

The application is based on the PBOC (People's Bank of China, http://www.pbc.gov.cn/english/) standard payment application, which is already deployed on millions of contactless banking cards.  The application is stored on the phone’s SIM card, which is connected to the INSIDE’s MicroRead® chip, using the SWP (Single Wire Protocol). SWP has now been adopted by the entire SIM card industry, following the GSMA’s support in its Near Field Communications (NFC) technical guidelines white paper, which was published in April 2007.

The Chongqing NFC/mobile contactless payment project is China’s first large-scale deployment of this emerging technology.  It enables direct feedback to be gathered from mobile operators, retailers and consumers, and helps to illustrate how consumers can securely and easily make purchases and obtain information, by simply waving their mobile phones past a contactless reader device. 
 
“We are pleased to be working with INSIDE Contactless for Chongqing’s NFC payment business,” said Mr Zheng Zuofei, Vice President of Just In Mobile.  “INSIDE’s MicroRead technology delivers the performance needed to ensure a successful customer experience, and we’re confident that this will lead to our future mobile payment initiatives in additional Chinese cities.“
 
“A number of companies have worked well together to make this project a success,” states Mr Simon Hu, Vice President Sales/General Manager for Greater China.  “In addition to Inside and Just In Mobile, we have also worked closely with Infineon and Mifare® to provide the reader infrastructure needed to make mobile purchases.  Several other Chinese and international handset manufacturers are also using INSIDE’s NFC solution – and in the months ahead, operators in different cities throughout China will adopt INSIDE’s SWP-based NFC solution.  I believe that NFC technology will change our daily payment methods, because of the speed, security, and convenience it provides to consumers.”
 
MicroRead® was chosen because of its advanced technical features, which allow Chinese operators to deploy targeted applications rapidly:  MicroRead’s SIM friendly solution for NFC payments connects the NFC chip to the SIM card using the industry standard SWP protocol.  Additionally, MicroRead’s “battery off” mode enables the NFC and SIM power supplies to be generated from the antenna RF field, to ensure that contactless transactions can be made, even when the handset battery is flat.
 
INSIDE’s MicroRead® establishes secure connections between devices, and helps to facilitate mobile payments, transport ticketing, service discovery, access control, and numerous other transactions from mobile phones or PDAs.  MicroRead-enabled mobile devices are able to complete transactions with other mobile phones, or with millions of contactless reader terminals already installed worldwide.  MicroRead supports all of the NFC standards which enables it to behave as both a reader and a card, in order to execute secure contactless transactions.  It also enables RFID transactions commonly used for Access control applications. 

The MicroRead® integrated circuits are targeted to Mobile operators, Bluetooth & WLAN technology providers, PC manufacturers for Hot-Synch applications, and contactless POS manufacturers.  MicroRead’s SIM-friendly architecture makes it easy for mobile operators to control the deployment of NFC applications – which is a critical step in deriving revenue from this revolutionary technology.