TELUS selects Gemalto's SIM cards for NFC services

Canadian telecommunications carrier TELUS has said that it will be using Gemalto's UpTeq NFC SIM cards to enable consumers to securely store data and payment credentials on their mobile devices. TELUS subscribers will  be able to use their mobile devices for secure payments, loyalty programs and transit passes.

"Gemalto's UpTeq NFC SIM technologies comply with the most stringent global security requirements and they have a vast track record in the successful rollout of NFC projects across the world," said Drazen Lalovic, vice president of market planning at TELUS. "TELUS will be bringing mobile payment technology to customers very soon and we have teamed up with Gemalto to offer a secure and seamless experience to enable the storage of payment and non-payment credentials on TELUS SIM cards."

Fully compliant with requirements from American Express, MasterCard and Visa, the UpTeq NFC SIM stores credit and other payment card credentials just as securely as a chip does, Gemalto said.

"Having migrated to EMV chip years ago, the Canadian market is naturally well positioned to offer NFC enabled credential solutions within its well-developed contactless ecosystem which boasts one of the greatest contractless-ready retail point-of-sale penetration rates globally," said Sébastien Cano, senior vice president of telecommunications at Gemalto North America. "TELUS' 7.7 million wireless customers will be among the first to enjoy the convenience of NFC services."

Although the fact that where there is cash there is temptation puts cash machines right in the front line, it is not the public’s responsibility to check the nuts and bolts of such a machine. Obviously if something is loose or suspiciously stuck on go elsewhere for the transaction and report any oddities to the bank.

Some commonsense precautionary measures are needed though. For a start shield the keypad as you tap in the pin and make sure no one is watching or able to distract you. A common ploy is the concoction of some diversion such as pretending the cardholder has dropped something. In this scenario the felon is likely to snatch what they can.

Any such scam may involve someone approaching the victim with a deceptively friendly air when, say, the card is jammed in the machine. They are likely to allege that the same thing has just happened to them. They may advise the victim to go into the bank, in which case they will take their spoils and disappear before the cardholder comes back. Or they may suggest the cardholder puts in the PIN again while, of course, they assist and watch. Then once the victim leaves minus the card and having given away the pin their bank account is raided.

Or a machine may be fitted with a skimmer that acts as a card reader to harvest the material on the magnetic stripe. This will be used in conjunction with a pinhole camera or via shoulder surfing with someone radioing or communicating in some other way details to the gang and which will then form the ingredients for a counterfeit card.

Most fraudulent devices such as tiny pinhole cameras overlooking the key pad and the other contraptions mentioned are craftily disguised and not visible to the naked eye.

 I understand that continued investment is being made by cash machine owners in such technical defences to help prevent such fraud including those making it more difficult to harvest viable details from chip and pin terminals. Such measures seem to be paying off with cash machine fraud down from ￡15.2 million in the six months from January to June 2011 to ￡14.6 million in the same period in 2012.

The Payments Council attributes this partly to a number of initiatives and customer vigilance. Also to the fact that success in countering fraud is sending criminal gangs overseas to places such as the US where there are easier pickings because they have not introduced chip and pin there.

NFC is one technology with real benefits as well as challenges. The opportunities for NFC include m-commerce, electronic funds transfer, and electronic ticketing, as is seen in Citi Hoppa’s Beba card. The technology is also useful in non-payment-related uses in industries.

In the smartphone mode of payment, the phone is equipped with an NFC chip and radio-wave transmitter in its hardware. When activated by a software application, the device transmits information via radio waves, which are received by sensors on an NFC reader module. The phone becomes a contactless “credit card” able to initiate payment for a transaction. Depending on the end user needs, a number of mobile money transactions can be initiated with a simple waving of the phone in front of the NFC receiver module or reader.

The advantages of NFC are clear. In terms of security, it deploys better measures compared to the credit card. Credit cards can be stolen, cloned, and swiped at card readers by any imposter. The NFC has unique end-user encryption protocols and authentication levels that appear superior compared to credit cards. Moreover, for a stolen phone, the NFC chip is automatically disabled remotely by the merchant or service provider once an alert is raised by the subscriber.

Although NFC involves waving the phone in front of a reader, the chances of criminals capitalising on-air-transmission snooping are slim. The phone is placed at a distance of less than four centimetres from the reader in order for the sensor to work, hence, making any interceptions of the monetary data impossible from nearby spy devices.

The NFC technology in mobile payments is just an alternative to SIM card-based payments. NFC is highly dependent on big industry players, merchants, and operators working together. As a matter of fact, the NFC technology at retail level requires supermarkets and payment points to adopt NFC sensors or readers and that boils down to additional costs. Besides, the mobile subscribers can only access the services using an NFC-enabled smartphone.