Two approaches to NFC battle for French hearts and mobiles

Two competing approaches to equipping mobile phones with contactless communications capabilities vied for supporters at the Cartes exhibition in Paris this week. Either approach could turn phones into self-service electronic tour guides, travel tickets or secure payment terminals.

One half of the technology is already in widespread use. Contactless smartcards -- credit-card-sized RFID tags with an embedded cryptographic chip for authentication and secure data storage -- are already used for access control, public transport tickets (such as Navigo in Paris and Oyster in London) and electronic payment systems (such as Visa Paywave), and the same chips can be used to add intelligent tags to objects or buildings, allowing shoppers or tourists to view related information. The chips are powered by a radio signal from the reader.

But anyone who uses such cards for multiple applications will quickly find their pockets or wallet cluttered with pieces of plastic. One way to cut the clutter is to put those applications in a smartcard chip embedded in a mobile phone, connected to a small antenna.

A bonus of combining phone and contactless smartcard in this way is that the same antenna can communicate with other smartcard chips, for example to show a payment card's balance on the phone's screen, or display information about a tagged object. Combining this NFC (Near-Field Communications) technology with a cellular data connection, the phone can also be used to renew a transport pass online and load it into the smartcard.

While NFC technology is already a success in Japan, where it was championed by mobile network operator NTT DoCoMo, attempts to take it beyond the pilot stage in France and elsewhere in Europe have stalled as network operators, banks, stores and transit authorities wait for one another to make the first move. There are two main problems: Banks and transit authorities won't load their application on someone else's smartcard chip unless its security and integrity can be guaranteed. Meanwhile stores are unwilling to deploy the necessary infrastructure of readers and applications unless they can be sure that a substantial proportion of their customers will be able to use them.

The two approaches to combining NFC smartcard and phone shown at Cartes each had a solution to one of these problems..

Cityzi, proposed by the French Mobile Contactless Association (AFSCM), relies on the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module), a small smartcard already present in all GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phones, and links it with NFC circuitry embedded in the phone's case. The security and reliability of the smartcard chips is guaranteed by the mobile operators that issue them, and all applications will be vetted before installation in the chips, said Bruno Prexl, the association's head of communications. However, there are still only two NFC-compatible GSM phones on the market, the Nokia 6216 and the Samsung Player One NFC Version, he said.

The French mobile network operators Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom -- all three are members of the AFSCM -- began developing common standards for SIM-based NFC systems in 2006, and have so far completed contactless payment trials with a small number of users and stores in Caen and Strasbourg.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.