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Singapore-based trusted service manager Cassis International has appointed smart card industry veteran Jean-Philippe Bétoin to take over its European operation as the company seeks to expand in Europe and take on its larger rivals on their home turf.

Cassis in Europe is going head-to-head against two other global trusted service managers, or TSMs, France-based Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient of Germany. The three companies, among others, are vying for much-delayed business with mobile operators and service providers, such as banks, transit operators and retailers, to securely download and manage applications and related data over the air to NFC phones or other mobile-contactless devices.

Bétoin, who helped set up the first over-the-air platform to manage GSM applications on SIM cards in the mid-1990s for France-based smart card vendor Gemplus, will be charged with carrying out Cassis’ European strategy. He will expand headcount and form “partnerships” with new service providers or other companies that want to offer their own trusted management services using Cassis’ platform. These will include payment processors and issuers of coupons and tickets for entertainment venues.

Bétoin, who more recently served as vice president for strategy and device marketing for the NFC business at Inside Contactless, began work Feb. 1, replacing Mehdi Elhaoussine.

“We are the only remaining independent TSM service and software supplier in Europe,” asserts Bétoin.

Giesecke & Devrient, a banknote printer and smart card supplier, in December bought out the remaining stake in trusted service manager Venyon from its joint-venture partner in the deal, Nokia. Gemalto, the largest supplier of smart cards worldwide, created its TSM unit in-house. Gemalto formed in 2006 from the merger of Gemplus International and Axalto.

Cassis itself has roots in Gemplus. Besides Bétoin, former Gemplus executive Thian Yee Chua, who is Cassis’ CEO, founded the company along with Marc Lassus, who was lead founder and chairman of Gemplus. Lassus has a seat on Cassis' board.

Pitching Independence
Cassis’ independence from smart card vendors makes a difference, contends Bétoin.

While at Gemplus, he said he saw firsthand how SIM vendors used over-the-air platforms to help them sell more cards. Vendors could offer extra features on their SIMs that their over-the-air platforms would also support. It would leave competing card vendors at a disadvantage. In general, SIMs from the same vendor supplying the OTA platform had a better fit. 

“That’s why an independent TSM vendor is required to avoid those things from happening,” he said.

And  it was well known in the SIM industry that SIM card suppliers often subsidized their over-the-air platform licensing or service fees for mobile operators to win business selling SIMs, though Bétoin did not make that assertion.

While managing GSM or 3G applications on SIM cards over the air is similar to trusted service management, TSM platforms require much more security. The TSMs will be downloading and managing bank payment and ticketing applications, including downloads of high-value tickets and possibly stored value. For the open-loop payment applications, they would need to be certified by the payment card networks, such as Visa and MasterCard Worldwide.

Besides trying to sell more of their own cards, TSMs owned by card vendors also could make it difficult for competing TSMs to access their cards for downloads of applications, not wanting to give away too many technical details of the cards.

Competitors: ‘Secure-Element Agnostic’
Gemalto and Venyon rejected the contention that their TSMs would favor their own SIM cards. "We are fully open to support any kind of secure element from any vendor," Venyon CEO Lauri Pesonen told NFC Times when asked about Venyon's independence following its buyout by G&D. "We are as agnotistic as we’ve always been." Gemalto also told NFC Times in a statement that its TSM platform is “secure-element agnostic” and, therefore, “can support any SIM manufacturer.”

It added that “actual implementation and testing is in progress with other SIM manufacturers, even though interoperability standards are not 100% completed.”

G&D last year scooped up one of the few remaining independent vendors for over-the-air SIM platforms, Sweden-based SmartTrust. G&D plans to integrate Venyon’s expertise with that SmartTrust.

The purchase also brings more relationships with mobile operators. G&D and Gemalto will no doubt try to use their wide-ranging contacts supplying SIM OTA management and SIM cards to operators, as well as banking cards and card personalization to banks and contactless cards for transit operators, to also sell TSM services to these customers.

Gemalto last year bought the Mifare4Mobile business from NXP Semiconductors, which will enable it to more smoothly download and manage Mifare applications, by far the most-used protocol for contactless transit fare-collection. In general, the big card vendor's goal is to reduce its dependence on sales of smart cards and increase revenue from providing services, such as the TSM business.

Despite this and their much larger resources, Cassis contends it has more employees, nearly 100, devoted to the TSM than its European rivals. It also said its TSM serves the only two rollouts of contactless-mobile payment outside of Japan, a large project in South Korea, along with a much smaller rollout in Malaysia.

Licensing the Platform
But to counter its competitors’ much larger revenue base, Cassis said it is trying to take a more nimble approach. Bétoin said the company, besides offering TSM services itself, is more willing than its rivals to license its over-the-air platform to local and regional suppliers or service providers. These suppliers often provide card personalization, procurement and even outsourced issuing for banks, transport operators and others. And some telcos, banks and other companies want to manage their own applications over-the-air, but need a platform.

“Our strategy (in Europe) is partnering with payment processors and transport integrators.” Bétoin said. “We’re also looking to partner with (entertainment) ticket issuers and coupon issuers.”

U.S.-based contactless reader and technology vendor Vivotech is following this model exclusively, offering to license its over-the-air TSM platform globally to other companies. Cassis already has a few customers in Europe that want to offer TSM services for rollouts and are licensing its OTA platform, including Turkish interbank group BKM, and France Telecom’s Orange Business Services. It also has a contract with a large payment processor in France. Like Venyon and Gemalto, Cassis has handled TSM duties for a number of trials in Europe. (See Project Database).

But rollouts are where the money is, and Gemalto is expected to notch contracts with one or more French banks and French rail operator SNCF, and perhaps one or more of the telcos in France. All those players hope to commercially launch NFC services by next year. And Gemalto said it is also open to licensing its TSM platform to processors or others that issue cards on an outsourced basis for banks or other service providers.

But Cassis said the fact it doesn’t offer competing services to prospective customers could help it gain an advantage even on Gemalto’s home soil. For example, the French processor Cassis is dealing with personalizes and issues cards for French banks, said Bétoin. Gemalto also personalizes cards, among other competing activities.

“It’s much easier for small players like Cassis to partner with big names that might compete with Gemalto,” he said.

Cassis will have to snag more big names if it hopes to stay competitive with its larger rivals in Europe. NT