Reference designs created by the companies are expected to help mobile phone OEMs and wireless carriers address the growing demand for NFC-capable smart phones, which are forecast to grow to nearly 300 million units worldwide by 2014 according to Juniper Research.

NXP, AuthenTec and DeviceFidelity also recently collaborated to complete the first biometrically-enabled NFC mobile payment transaction in the U.S. The successful transaction was made possible via a Motorola ATRIX 4G smartphone equipped with AuthenTec's AES1750 smart fingerprint sensor and DeviceFidelity's In2Pay microSD card based on NXP's secure NFC solution. The quick, convenient and secure mobile payment was conducted when the demonstrator swiped a finger over the smartphone's fingerprint sensor, authenticating him as the pre-enrolled account owner and quickly launching a credit card app. Following authentication the user simply tapped the ATRIX smartphone against a payment terminal to complete the first fingerprint-enabled, secure NFC transaction in the U.S. NXP, AuthenTec and DeviceFidelity plan to collaborate further on additional, similar NFC-based designs to help enable broad proliferation of mobile wallets in the U.S. and other regions.

"The payment experience demonstrated by NXP, DeviceFidelity and AuthenTec provides the convenience, speed, and security consumers require for broad adoption of mobile wallets. As the global leader in NFC solutions, we look forward to building on our leadership through collaboration with AuthenTec, the world's No. 1 provider of fingerprint sensors, and leading pluggable payment solutions provider, DeviceFidelity," said Henri Ardevol, vice president and general manager, secure transactions, NXP Semiconductors. "The fingerprint transaction shows how future mobile transactions may become increasingly convenient through the use of NFC and biometrics. In the meantime, however, we continue to focus on bringing easy-to-integrate yet highly secure solutions to mobile phone OEMs and carriers eager to offer secure mobile wallet designs."

"AuthenTec has helped to make NFC-based mobile payment transactions more secure, yet easier to execute since 2004, and we are very pleased to collaborate with NFC and mobile payment leaders NXP and DeviceFidelity to create designs that will help bring a new generation of fingerprint-enabled mobile wallets to the U.S. and other regions," said AuthenTec CEO Larry Ciaccia. "Security is often cited as the biggest impediment to the broad adoption of mobile wallets, and we believe our jointly developed NFC reference designs will give consumers greater confidence that mobile wallets are not only an easier way to pay but are much more secure than other means."

"Our In2Pay platform continues to create exciting new use cases for NFC based transactions, each of which aim to transform the end user payment experience. Through collaborations with NXP and AuthenTec, DeviceFidelity's ability to offer secure consumer centric mobile contactless payment technologies for top tier issuers of NFC products is amplified," said DeviceFidelity COO and cofounder Amitaabh Malhotra. "Our jointly-created designs, including the new In2Pay microSD integration credited with the first fingerprint-authenticated mobile payment transaction in the U.S., will form the basis for the adoption of enhanced security for NFC capabilities in mobile devices."

The companies are fully committed to developing highly secure and easy to use mobile commerce subsystems to help ease design integration for mobile phone OEMs. Field upgradeable solutions and integrated reference designs will provide a variety of options to mobile phone OEMs for fielding mobile commerce transaction-ready platforms.

AuthenTec offers complete security and identity management solutions for the mobile market, including embedded security, smart fingerprint sensors and software. AuthenTec's mobile market offering includes embedded and downloadable DRM content protection, mobile VPN client solutions, security hardware IP, identity management software, and smart fingerprint sensors that are used in more than 15 million mobile phones. AuthenTec provides the most advanced levels of security, reliability, and performance for mobile phone users, mobile operators, content providers, embedded security developers and many others, saving them time and money while optimizing performance.