New crypto support for mobile payment issuers

Thales announced software for Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) that enables mobile payment issuers to deliver their mobile payment applications to mobile handsets Over-The-Air (OTA) in a secure manner.

According to Juniper Research mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will reach almost $630bn by 2014.

The many recent announcements by handset manufacturers and Mobile Network Operators on the support for NFC on phones suggest 2011 could be the year when phones capable of mobile payments will become widely available.

Today’s mobile payments issuers have to use multiple core cryptographic function calls to build the data needed to issue a payment application and to create the secure messages required to personalize the mobile phone with the application OTA. This approach can be lengthy, inefficient, and less secure as it can potentially expose sensitive data.

Thales HSMs now provide the ability to create a secure message to personalize a payment application hosted in a GlobalPlatform Secure Element, resident in a mobile phone using a single dedicated cryptographic HSM call.