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Turkey: Group Plans Multibank NFC Trial with Multiple Secure Elements
Much-delayed trial will bring together six banks and one mobile operator for contactless payment using applications from both Visa and MasterCard. Plans call for storing applications on embedded chips in some phones and on SIMs in other phones. The trial would expand to transit ticketing, couponing and topping up of accounts as part of a second trial phase that could involve up the 15,000 users and incorporate such bridge technologies as contactless microSD cards and SIMs with flexible antennas. Turkey’s interbank card organization, BKM, will lead the trial. It hopes to use the project to launch its national and then international trusted service management operation, using a platform from Singapore-based Cassis International.
The ambitious trial was originally planned for January 2009, though complexities from the multiple banks and payment applications contributed to the delays. BKM says the trial and hoped for commercial launch will not rely on any one type of secure element or handset or mobile operator. But Turkey’s dominant telco, Turkcell, is perhaps not convinced the apps will run on SIMs in some of the phones in the trial and is keeping its distance from the project. The mobile operator may also not like the fact that a banking organization is driving the project. Organizers, however, say Turkcell will be onboard for later phases of the project, which will include only one telco, Avea, when the first phase launches, planned for the summer of 2010.
* Trusted Service Manager: Defined loosely to include companies or other organizations securely distributing, provisioning and managing applications, generally over the air, on secure elements in NFC mobile phones; or licensing their platforms for this purpose.
N/A: Not available or not applicable. Last update: July 2010
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