CellTrust to offer low cost NFC provisioning and personalisation solution

Mobile network operators and service providers could save hundreds of thousands of dollars using SecureSMS to provision and personalise NFC applications over the air, says CellTrust’s CEO.

CellTrust CEO Sean Moshir
MOSHIR: Provisioning NFC via SMS promises big savings

Secure SMS specialist CellTrust is to introduce a new method of provisioning and personalising NFC applications in early 2011 that, the company’s CEO has told NFC World, could save mobile network operators and service providers hundreds of thousands of dollars in NFC implementation costs.

“While a few methods exist to provision NFC, CellTrust believes SMS is the optimal choice because it uses the mobile communications control channel, which is separate from voice and data and operates regardless of the voice or data being used,” the company explains. “The control channel has high resiliency, low bandwidth requirements and was designed for carriers to send specific commands and instructions to the handset via SMS.”

“It is important to note that standard SMS is not secure and can be spoofed,” CellTrust adds. “Provisioning NFC with CellTrust’s SecureSMS APIs addresses spoofing with a fully authenticated government-grade, highly encrypted, tamper-proof process, which also enables message sizes up to 5,000 characters.”

“CellTrust’s SecureSMS NFC APIs use Short Message Service Center (SMSC) and allow carriers to use their existing investment in SMS infrastructure while provisioning NFC, therefore a new NFC platform is not required,” the company continues. “Carriers can easily integrate with the SecureSMS APIs and send secure commands and instructions to the handset to provision NFC with all types of transactions, including adding and deleting credit cards.”

“We believe the cost savings for mobile operators will be substantial, since they will be utilising their existing SMSC infrastructure,” Sean Moshir, CellTrust’s CEO, told NFC World. While the cost of adding CellTrust’s SecureSMS-based NFC solution “depends on the set up they have… it is going to be, we believe, substantially less if the carrier uses SMS versus other technology… We’re just adding one little appliance on the side.” Overall, Moshir believes, the savings in implementation costs should run to “hundreds of thousands of dollars at least.”

Service providers will also be able to use CellTrust’s technology to provision and personalise NFC applications, Moshir adds, and a software development kit is to be released in the near future.

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