Industry Leaders Establish MIFARE4Mobile
Industry Group  

Industry collaboration to drive forward MIFARE standardization
for NFC applications

Eindhoven, Netherlands, June 30th, 2010 – Seven leading players in the Near Field Communication (NFC) ecosystem, Ericsson, Gemalto, NXP, Oberthur Technologies, STMicroelectronics, Venyon, a company in the Giesecke&Devrient group, and ViVOtech today joined forces to form the MIFARE4Mobile Industry Group. The aim of the group is to enable its members to collaborate and work together to standardize and advance the uniform management of MIFARE applications on NFC-enabled secure elements, such as SIM cards, and mobile phones.

MIFARE has become the most widely adopted contactless technology on the market today and is an essential element in public transportation schemes, ticketing systems and access management around the world. MIFARE4Mobile is a technology, which has been developed by NXP and is used to manage MIFARE-based services in NFC mobile devices, from the over-the-air installation to the end-user interaction via the user interface of the mobile phone. By bringing together some of the key players in the NFC ecosystem, the group will act as a platform to provide future direction, discuss experiences and share best practices to ensure evolution, interoperable development and implementation of the MIFARE4Mobile technology.

“The creation of this new industry group provides further impetus to the development of NFC applications for mobile phones especially given MIFARE’s reach as a key contactless platform,” said Jonathan Collins, principal analyst, ABI Research “As SIM-based NFC phones come to market, greater collaboration by all stakeholders to remove development and interoperability barriers in existing contactless infrastructures will help drive NFC adoption.”

“The MIFARE4Mobile technology enables mobile network operators, trusted services manager and service providers to seamlessly leverage NFC-enabled mobile phone services on the existing vast MIFARE infrastructures around the world,” said Dr. Nav Bains, Senior Director Mobile Money, GSM Association. “Increased collaboration by some of NFC’s most influential stakeholders will support the creation and facilitate the integration of business for the mobile network industry related to NFC-based services.”

Over the next few months, the MIFARE4Mobile industry group will further develop the specifications supporting MIFARE DESFire technology and multiple Trusted Service Managers, following the initial MIFARE4Mobile release from late 2008 supporting MIFARE Classic technology. Licences for the MIFARE4Mobile Interface specifications are free of charge.

As an increased number of companies begin to develop their own NFC applications to support transactions such as ticketing, there is an increased need for collaboration with other partners in the ecosystem to enable interoperable over the air configuration of SIM cards and handsets. This process automatically facilitates the activation, updates, provisioning and lifecycle management of contactless mobile services. The MIFARE4Mobile industry group, which includes both hardware partners and trusted service managers, will actively support the global adoption of NFC and the needs of all stakeholders.

The current version of the MIFARE4Mobile interfaces specifications, released by NXP, is available under http://www.mifare.net/products/mifare4mobile/ and has been licensed more then 200 times by major industry players around the world.

MIFARE and MIFARE4Mobile are trademarks of NXP B.V.

About MIFARE4Mobile

MIFARE4Mobile is a technology that provides mobile network operators, trusted services managers and service providers with a single, interoperable programming interface to remotely provision and manage MIFARE-based services in embedded secure elements and SIM cards of mobile NFC devices “over the air” (OTA).

The MIFARE4mobile interface specifications are grouped into 3 categories:

Wallet / User Interface APIs
- Ensure a consistent user experience
- Provide full interoperability with other card formats
- Render card content on the phone screen in a convenient and flexible way

Over The Air / Trusted Service Manager APIs
- Allow OTA providers to access MIFARE resources of any secure element in a consistent way
- Ensure uniform approach to MIFARE application life cycle management

Secure Element Platform APIs
- Provide common access to the hardware resources of the MIFARE portfolio

About NXP Semiconductors

NXP Semiconductors provides High Performance Mixed Signal and Standard Product solutions that leverage its leading RF, Analog, Power, Digital Processing and manufacturing expertise. These innovations are used in a wide range of automotive, industrial, consumer, lighting, medical, computing and identification applications. Headquartered in Europe, the company has about 28,000 employees working in more than 25 countries and posted sales of USD 3.8 billion in 2009. News from NXP is located at www.nxp.com.

About ViVOtech:

ViVOtech (www.vivotech.com) is the leading end-to-end enabler of next-generation mobile payments, loyalty and marketing solutions. ViVOtech provides mobile payment solutions, mobile marketing and loyalty applications software for existing as well as Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile handsets, Over-The-Air (OTA) provisioning infrastructure software, NFC smart posters and contactless terminals. ViVOtech’s products are used by most prominent retailers all over the globe; the company has shipped close to 700,000 contactless and NFC payment terminals to more than 35 countries. In 2009, ViVOtech received the prestigious Frost and Sullivan North American Smart Cards Product Line Strategy of the Year Award. In 2010, ViVOtech has won “2010 Mobility Award” for its NFC mobile ViVOwallet software, Smart Card Alliance Award “Outstanding Smart Card Achievement” (OSCA) Award for Innovation in Payments Technology and the Contactless Intelligence “Monkey” Awards for Competitive Advantage through Technology used by Citi Tap and Pay NFC Pilot. ViVOtech’s investors include Citi, First Data Corporation, Motorola Ventures, NCR and Nokia Growth Partners.