In the trial, Bank of America associates will be given the option of near field communications (NFC)-enabled mobile phones, which can be used to purchase items by waving the phone past a contactless-enabled POS terminal or vending machine.
The user acceptance trial program tests consumer interest in different devices, including the Nokia NFC handset, as a companion device to traditional credit cards. The payment application for the transactions is stored in a ‘secure area,’ a smart card technology-based chip, in the mobile handset. This area is managed by Giesecke & Devrient’s (G&D) secure chip management platform.
The platform allows the remote upload, activation and personalization of applications and customer data to the mobile phone’s secure area. The management is performed over the air using a mobile operator’s network, rather than in a specific location. G&D says that this is convenient for the subscriber as their handset can be updated wherever they are in the mobile service area.
G&D and Nokia recently formed a joint venture, Venyon, which is responsible for bringing the secure chip management system to the marketplace. Besides mobile payment, other applications, such as ticketing, service discovery and access control, can also be managed via the platform during their complete lifecycle.
