Contactless payments vendor ViVOtech is set to begin a field trial on its new over-the-air (OTA) NFC infrastructure software with an undisclosed Europe wireless carrier and issuer bank.
The new solution is from an interoperability agreement with German-based Giesecke & Devrient’s NFC-enabled SIM cards, which for the first time to bring OTA provisioning of the financial account and payments applets to the SIM card.
What the technology allows is for NFC applications to be loaded onto a SIM card through the mobile network, as well as maintained and updated. This is important so as to add a “future-proof” capability to NFC apps that a carrier or banking institution would provide to customers.
Santa Clara-CA-based ViVOtech has been playing a crucial role in mediating the needs of carriers, banks and merchants in moving toward NFC contactless trial by building systems that work in multi-operator environments. It has received investments from both Citigroup and First Data in the past year.
