Vivotech Inc. has launched a new software suite called Vivonfc to manage payment systems that use Near Field Communication chips, the company announced March 21.
Such chips enable contactless payments from mobile phones, though few phones in the U.S. have the technology in place today. Vivotech said its new software suite would help enable payments handled from handsets as more phones are built with the technology.
“NFC mobile commerce is quickly moving from promise to reality,” Michael Mullagh, Vivotech chief executive, said in a press release.
The Vivonfc suite provides “the key building blocks to enable multiple players in the complex NFC ecosystem to interoperate at scale and provide transformative rich payment, shopping and loyalty experience[s] for consumers,” he said.
The Vivonfc suite comprises Trusted Service Manager provisioning software, an NFC issuer server, an NFC control server and a Vivowallet library.
The Trusted Service Manager provisioning software supports the provisioning of various card types and the delivery of marketing messages by mobile-network operators, handset manufacturers, banks, merchants, and each of their partners.
The Vivonfc Issuer Server serves a similar purpose for credit, debit and prepaid issuers. In conjunction with the Vivowallet Library, it supports the creation and management of “soft cards” that reside in a mobile payments application.
Consumers may use cards created through the Vivowallet Library at merchants that use contactless card readers at the point of sale.
The Vivonfc control server handles communication between a virtual wallet application and multiple issuer servers.
