Industry Bodies Align to Standardize On-Device NFC Service Management

March 13 2017 – ETSI, GlobalPlatform and the NFC Forum today detailed a standardized approach to implementing and managing NFC services across all technologies and platforms. The shared work initiative explains how to ensure that NFC services successfully coexist within a device and operate as intended.

The standardized approach clarifies how the ecosystem details the expected behavior of multiple NFC services hosted in the same device and simplifies the end user experience. This benefits service providers offering NFC services in devices such as smartphones. This covers services such as payment, transport, loyalty or access control. The approach will also be of interest to OEMs developing devices that support NFC services. For consumers, this clarity brings guarantees that services will work as advertised, regardless of the hosting contactless environment selected by the service provider.

The defined framework supports:

• Multiple NFC service applications coexisting within a device, with the ability to detect any potential conflicts.
• The activation of multiple NFC services at the same time within a single device.
• A consistent approach to the lifecycle management of NFC services to ensure standardized behavior.
• Simplification of the end-user experience when selecting NFC services for entities such as mobile wallets providers.
• Secure Elements (SEs) already in the field, as all specifications are backward compatible.

Klaus Vedder, Chairman of the ETSI Technical Committee Smart Card Platform, explains: “The range of SE technologies available, such as UICC, embedded SE, host card emulation and MicroSD as well as a number of solutions still based on proprietary technology creates an unnecessary fragmentation in the mobile contactless market, at the expense of end-users, service providers and the ecosystem. This fragmentation can cause unpredictable behavior of NFC services depending on the model and configuration of the device, implementation choices and presence of other NFC applications. The harmonization of the behavior of NFC services, regardless of the underlying technology, is thus of utmost importance for the success of the services in the market".

“ETSI, GlobalPlatform and the NFC Forum all share the same goal; we want to provide a standardized ecosystem that encourages the mass adoption of NFC services without compromising service integrity,” adds, Gil Bernabeu, Technical Director of GlobalPlatform. “The synchronization across our three technical bodies is key in supporting service providers and ensuring that consumers can activate NFC services as and when they need to.”

“Significant progress has been made over the years to ensure service providers can accelerate the deployment of NFC services, regardless of how the service is hosted in the device,” says Paula Hunter, Executive Director of the NFC Forum. “Legacy contactless systems were not always designed to work together, so the NFC service management framework now provides a way to integrate these different contactless applications into one NFC-enabled smartphone. This collaboration among three industry partners will have a positive impact on the market in the coming years.”

The standardized approach is detailed in a joint white paper – Ensure Interworking Between Multiple Contactless Card Emulation Environments. The related industry specification, GlobalPlatform Managing Entity Specification will be released in Q1 2017. This will be supported by the latest versions of ETSI TS 102 221, ETSI TS 102 622 and NFC Forum NCI Technical Specification Version 2.0, currently a candidate specification that is to be published before the end of this year.

-ENDS-

Notes to editors:

About ETSI
ETSI produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, aeronautical, broadcast and internet technologies and is officially recognized by the European Union as a European Standards Organization. ETSI is an independent, not-for-profit association whose more than 800 member companies and organizations, drawn from 67 countries across five continents worldwide, determine its work programme and participate directly in its work.

For more information please visit: www.etsi.org

About GlobalPlatform
GlobalPlatform defines and develops specifications to facilitate the secure deployment and management of multiple embedded applications on secure chip technology. Its standardized infrastructure empowers service providers to develop services once and deploy across different markets, devices and channels. GlobalPlatform’s security and privacy parameters enable dynamic combinations of secure and non-secure services from multiple providers on the same device, providing a foundation for market convergence and innovative new cross-sector partnerships.

For more information on GlobalPlatform membership visit www.globalplatform.org, follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/wOiHFp, join us on LinkedIn: https://linkd.in/xjxsN5, subscribe to GlobalPlatformTV: https://bit.ly/1BzvLoa.

Media contact details:
Rob Peryer or Erin Lovett at iseepr: rob@iseepr.co.uk / erin@iseepr.co.uk or on + 44 (0) 113 350 1922.

About the NFC Forum
The NFC Forum (www.nfc-forum.org) was launched as a non-profit industry association in 2004 by leading mobile communications, semiconductor, and consumer electronics companies. The Forum's mission is to advance the use of Near Field Communication technology by developing specifications, ensuring interoperability among devices and services, and educating the market about NFC technology. The Forum's global member companies are currently developing specifications for a modular NFC device architecture, and protocols for interoperable data exchange and device-independent service delivery, device discovery, and device capability. The NFC Forum's Sponsor members, which hold seats on the Board of Directors, include leading players in key industries around the world. The Sponsor members are: Apple Inc., Broadcom Corporation, Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd., Google, Inc., Intel, MasterCard Worldwide, NXP® Semiconductors, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Corporation, STMicroelectronics, and Visa Inc.