Near field communication (NFC) is playing a rapidly growing role in the mobile commerce market, which will be worth more than $1 trillion annually by 2017, IDC predicts.
Recent NFC initiatives from C-SAM, a pioneer in secure mobile transactions technology, enable financial and non-financial services companies to capitalize on that opportunity by minimizing the time required to develop, test and launch NFC products and services.
NFC Applets
C-SAM's suite of NFC applets enables NFC-based proximity transaction in a variety of domains. C-SAM custom applets go beyond facilitating transactions by providing value-added features such as wallet functionality and security. The full suite of applets includes coupon applets, loyalty applets, generic value added services applets, receipt applets, movie ticketing applets, event ticketing applets, transit applets, access control applets, and wallet and widget management applets. In addition to offering the standard suite of applets, C-SAM undertakes development of applets to 3rd party specifications on a contract basis.
"C-SAM's applets are the latest example of our expertise in taking standardized, widely used technologies and implementing enhanced end-to-end mobile-based solutions," said Dr. Ajit Karnik, C-SAM senior vice president for innovation and new business. "Our custom applets give companies a range of new options for providing consumers with an enhanced proximity transaction experience in addition to value such as discounts, rewards and other perks."
Test Automation Tools and Services
C-SAM has developed a suite of test automation tools for testing NFC components such as applets, and also for testing complete end-to-end solutions in the NFC ecosystem. Manual testing of applets and NFC solutions is a time consuming and cumbersome task, and automated tools facilitate rigorous testing of applets while significantly reducing the mean-time-to-test compared to the manual alternative. These tools also enable remote testing of applets installed in UICC and MicroSD based secure elements.
In addition to in-house applications, C-SAM will offer testing services to select customers.stomers. By automating the testing process at both the component and system levels, C-SAM test tools allow companies to roll out applets, solutions and upgrades in shorter timeframes. Some features of the test automation tools include:
Regression testing of applets over contact and contactless interfaces
Remote testing and management of applets on mobile phones
Regressive testing of end-to-end solutions
Compliance testing of device OS API for accessing secure elements
"These new offerings further position C-SAM as a pervasive, single-stop, end-to-end solution-provider spanning proximity and remote transactions," said Felix Marx, C-SAM CEO. "Combined with C-SAM's interfaces to third-party back-end systems and optical and NFC proximity interfaces, our test-automation services and custom Java applets enable retailers, mobile network operators, financial institutions and other companies to develop, test and launch reliable and secure NFC capabilities faster and easier than ever before."