When NFC services finally begin to roll out, many in the industry are concerned there will be a breakdown in communication between mobile operators and banks and other service providers.
This does not refer to such commercial issues as revenue sharing or who owns the customer. Those are separate problems. It’s on the technical side: How will a fragmented base of trusted service managers download and manage, for example, payment applications on mobile phones to make sure all customers of participating banks will be able to use the NFC services no matter which mobile operator they subscribe to.
To try to prevent things from getting out of hand–assuming NFC gets rolled out widely–smart card standards group GlobalPlatform has formed a Trusted Service Manager Working Group. The new committee is charged with coming up with a standard that will get the various players and their technology suppliers in an NFC project to speak a common language when it comes to downloading and managing applications. The specifications are designed to enable all trusted service managers, or TSMs, to talk to all mobile operators in a given market.
