NFC & Mobile Identity - Two Sides of the Same Coin

I have recently spoken to my colleague Marc Printz, Mobile Identity Product Manager at sicap, about the SIM cards required for Mobile ID services. Some of the mobile operators are concerned about the availability of PKI-SIM cards required for Mobile ID services and even more so about the necessity for the subscribers to exchange their old SIM cards in order to be able to use such services.

As most operators are looking to launch NFC in the very near future, it is worth in this context to look at the relationship between NFC and Mobile Identity. As it turns out, they are two sides of the same coin. Moreover, they have a symbiotic relationship, a mutually beneficial relationship. And here is why. 

Sicap sees a bright future in NFC based services. However, the creation of a big NFC market depends on the successful bootstrapping of an entire and quite complex ecosystem: NFC-supporting mobile phones require an infrastructure of NFC readers and NFC-enabled services to support the use cases desired by people and corporations (get some market data in a previous post). The NFC-supporting mobile phones need TSMs so multiple applications can be loaded onto the SIM cards/Secure Elements, which in the updated TSM model requires both Service-TSMs on the service provider side and Operator-TSMs on the mobile operator side (with SecureMe sicap moreover addresses the problem of aligning applications on SIM cards with device-OS based Apps or Wallets). Normally, people who wish to use NFC need to replace their SIM cards with NFC-supporting SIM cards.

The big question is: how to accelerate this development? How to build the required positive feedback loops that amplify the demand for each part of the ecosystem so that every participant invests into its own part? How can this complex machinery be lubricated and brought into continuous fast movement?

Mobile Identity is not only related to NFC because NFC applications often take identity related roles (e.g. opening doors and credit payments require secure authentication). Both require a JavaCard and Global Platform-based SIM card that can hold applets and perform crypto-operations (symmetric and asymmetric). A mobile user who has already signed up for NFC services has therefore already made the SIM investment, so getting started with mobile signature services is technically simple, a matter of registration. And vice versa.  NFC and mobile signature services are complementary, and adopting one service significantly lowers the entrance barrier to the other service.

The sicap recommendation therefore is to offer an NFC and Mobile Identity mix right from the start, and not as an afterthought. Combining the roll-out will speed up mass adoption of compatible SIMs.

Octavian Dobrin
Key Account Manager at sicap