Chinese city to get NFC smart meters

Advanced energy-metering supplier Wasion Group is to begin deploying new NFC-enabled post-pay electricity meters in the city of Chongqing, China, from this month.

Wasion's NFC smart meter

Wasion’s new meters include an NFC system-in-a-package (SiP) solution supplied by ST Microelectronics that enables consumers to read their smart meter with an NFC phone. Once a reading has been taken, the data is encrypted and sent over-the-air to the service’s banking back-end to complete payment for the electricity used.

ST’s system-in-a-package contains an NFC contactless interface — the ST21NFCA — and a secure element, the ST33F1M, which runs a secure operating system from Gemalto that is based on GlobalPlatform’s GP2.2/Java3.0.1 specification.

“The Java OS and Java applets provide a secure environment for the application to run and store metering data,” says ST. “With this level of security, the same solution can also be used for pre-pay contract users.”

“Our NFC solution with high-performance secure element assures a secure user experience when making mobile payments with NFC-enabled smart phones,” explains ST’s Arnaud Julienne. “With Wasion’s dedicated application running on an NFC-enabled mobile phone, users can easily make their electricity-fee payments from home.”

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