Visa and BofA plot operatorless NFC
Hitting New York next month
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery
Bank of America and Visa will be running trials of NFC technology next month but the network operators won't be involved this time, as companies sidestep the traditional process.
The trials will use NFC circuits built into MicroSD cards that can be slotted into a phone or a specially-equipped iPhone case to provide secure storage and radio communications without being dependent on the network operator or the phone's manufacturer.
Previous attempts to get Near Field Communications into mobile phones have depended on the manufacturer's compliance and, as network operators pay for the phones, on the operator's largess. That works in Japan where the operator is also the bank and owns the payment system, but elsewhere the conservative nature of operators has stymied the technology.
Bypassing the operator/manufacturer means retrofitting handsets with radio circuits and secure storage. Stickers can provide some of the functionality, but not full NFC (where the chip is both tag and reader). Such solutions can't communicate with the phone's screen either.
Removable storage should work, but being sandwiched between the battery and motherboard isn't ideal for radio propagation. China Mobile gets around that problem by dropping NFC-compliance and upping the transmission power, but that option is only available to the largest of companies.
The traditional positioning of the removable memory has changed lately - modern handsets have a MicroSD slot positioned on the back, under a radio-transparent plastic cover, so getting a signal out isn't such an issue. Smartphones also allow third parties to add applications, without having to work with the network operator.
American operators are waking up to NFC, with Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Discover working together to create a proximity-payment standard, but if Visa and the Bank of America can cut the operator out of the loop that may be redundant before it's launched.
So these trials are a big deal for an industry struggling to work out who owns the phone you thought was yours. ®
COMMENTS
FFS, can we have this already?
Almost every CC fraud today is a replay attack, one time tokens will be the way to go...
Who...?
"So these trials are a big deal for an industry struggling to work out who owns the phone you thought was yours"
*I* own my smartphone - bought it outright so I didn't have to deal with lock-ins and crappy operator-specific firmware "upgrades". AUD30 a month now covers all my calls and my data needs.
@VoodooTrucker
Totally agree, I blame all the corporate stagnation on too much control and lack of competition. Manufacturers and operators have colluded to lock out independent innovation.
Years ago I read about all the cool things one could develop on a bluetooth enabled phone. I downloaded an SDK and was ecstatic about the possibilities as I ran the examples on a virtual phone. However it was when I tried to download it to a real phone that I discovered how nokia and at&t simply disabled major functionality of the phone for third party developers.
I can't help but think of all the innovation consumers have lost out on because of greedy corporate control via DRM, which one may observe has ever less to do with copyrights and more to do with ending user control. If today's culture was more open, as it was for the original PC, then secure payments via cell phones would already be available to the public.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM Implementer’s Checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
