News
Thales announces new crypto support for mobile payment issuers
August 2011 by Marc Jacob
Thales announces the world’s first software for Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) that enables mobile payment issuers to deliver their mobile payment applications to mobile handsets Over-The-Air (OTA) in a simple, efficient and secure manner.
According to Juniper Research mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will reach almost $630bn by 2014. The many recent announcements by handset manufacturers and Mobile Network Operators on the support for NFC on phones suggest 2011 could be the year when phones capable of mobile payments will become widely available.
Today’s mobile payments issuers have to use multiple core cryptographic function calls to build the data needed to issue a payment application and to create the secure messages required to personalize the mobile phone with the application Over-The-Air (OTA). This approach can be lengthy, inefficient, and less secure as it can potentially expose sensitive data.
Thales HSMs now provide for the first time the ability to create a secure message to personalize a payment application hosted in a GlobalPlatform Secure Element, resident in a mobile phone using a single dedicated cryptographic HSM call. The new card and phone personalization software is based on the industry standard specifications for secure messaging developed and published by GlobalPlatform.
Thales Mobile payments application issuing functions are available on its latest generation of Hardware Security Modules, payShield 9000, which include market leading performance and resiliency that today’s data centres demand.
