The NFC Forum has signed a series of agreements, with the GSM Association (GSMA), EMVCo and the Smart Card Alliance, designed to enable it to work more closely with each of the associations on the development of the NFC market and near field communication-based solutions.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the NFC Forum and EMVCo will see the card payments standards body sharing technical information with the NFC Forum so that a certification programme can be put into place for the use of NFC devices to make payments at the point-of-sale and also for them to act as POS terminals.

The partnership with the GSMA will see the two organisations sharing information and collaborating on joint marketing activities, such as seminar sessions, white papers and presentations.

The NFC Forum and the Smart Card Alliance, meanwhile, will team up on a number of joint marketing initiatives, including educational programs for vertical markets such as retail and transport. Other programs under discussion include presentations at each other’s events and meetings, a joint event targeting the retail market in the US and the provision for regular information sharing between the NFC Forum Marketing Committee and Smart Card Alliance Contactless and Mobile Payments Council.

"The ongoing global deployment and adoption of NFC technology requires our close cooperation and interaction with all the key players in the NFC ecosystem," said Koichi Tagawa, chairman of the NFC Forum. "As the leading voices representing payment card companies, mobile operators, and the smart card industry, respectively, EMVCo, GSMA and Smart Card Alliance are valued partners in our efforts to bring the ease and power of NFC technology to mobile users around the globe."

The NFC Forum has already established liaisons with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the Mobey Forum. The GSMA and EMVCo, meanwhile, are also already working with GlobalPlatform on the development of a cross-industry NFC certification process.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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COLLABORATION: Working together with proven technologies and existing infrastructure can make NFC payments a reality, says the SCA

'Security of Proximity Mobile Payments', a new white paper from the Smart Card Alliance, sets out a business model for NFC payments based on collaboration between industry stakeholders and the leveraging of both existing technology and existing merchant infrastructure.

In the Smart Card Alliance's 'collaboration model', financial institutions, mobile operators, trusted third parties and other stakeholders in the mobile payments ecosystem would cooperate in the management and deployment of mobile applications. As well as explaining the roles and responsibilities of each of the players in a potential NFC ecosystem, the white paper also identifies the risks present during the lifecycle of the payment information stored on the mobile device and suggests appropriate countermeasures.

"There is no question that consumers love mobile technology and view it as a necessity in their daily lives, so it makes sense for the next step to be paying with cell phones," says Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "This white paper explains how industry stakeholders can take advantage of this love of mobile technology and introduce secure proximity mobile payments by collaborating and leveraging proven technology and a merchant infrastructure that is already in place."

Readers can download the white paper free of charge from the Smart Card Alliance website.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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