Gemalto wants to connect the world

September 8, 2014

Gemalto wants to use its position as a digital security company in the payments industry to make it simpler for all stakeholders interested in NFC-enabled mobile payments to come to an agreement on how best to do business with each other.

To help foster such collaboration and bring NFC pilots and rollouts to the market faster, Gemalto today announced its new Allynis Trusted Services Hub. Gemalto will act as a go-between to help banks, transportation companies and other firms make the right connection with mobile network operators and original equipment manufacturers to access the coveted secure element on NFC-enabled smartphones. Gemalto's announcement comes a day before Apple is expected to announce an NFC-enabled smartphone. Coincidence? Maybe. But the time appears right for Gemalto to release this service based on the attention mobile payments has garnered this summer.

Obstacles

One of the largest stumbling blocks to prevalent mobile payments at the physical point of sale has always been the inability of different industry stakeholders to get on the same page because everyone wants a piece of the payment transaction. This has forced banks and others to negotiate with MNOs at slow pace to agree what works best for all parties. "You'd have a bank trying to establish a relationship with just one MNO or OEM. It's been slowing down the process of effectively deploying essential services," Jean-Claude Deturche, senior vice president of mobile financial services at Gemalto, told Mobile Payments Today in an interview Friday ahead of the official annoucement. Gemalto intends to ease the gridlock as it serves as the trusted service manager for some 1.5 billion mobile phones and has more than a hundred million SIMs already in place to manage and protect sensitive application credentials. The Amsterdam-based company is the gatekeeper to the secure element and has the connection banks, transportation companies and others want for mobile payments.

"As an enabler of providing these [TSM] services, we realize it would be good for Gemalto to facilitate these relationships to accelerate the process and make it easier for service providers," Deturche said. "Instead of waiting for the various stakeholders to talk to each other and engage in business, we are taking a central role and proactively connecting everyone."

Deturche estimates Gemalto can cut the time it takes for such partnerships to release an NFC-enabled mobile project from 12 months to three months, or even less. In theory, that could open the door for more NFC rollouts than we see now. "We think this is the right time to accelerate the process and push things further," Deturche said. "We are seeing many services providers who want to get into mobile. We are seeing MNOs and OEMs that want to play in this value chain in securing access to these services."

Source: Mobile Payments Today