Back in September last year, we wrote a post about NFC acceleration and the role of Trusted Service Manager (TSM) Hubs.
The rise of TSM hubs, or consortiums, is continuing. A good example is financial IT services provider SIA, the Processor of Cartasi of ICBPI Group, the most important issuer in Italy. It set up a TSM Hub with the two major local mobile operators, Vodafone and Telecom Italia, and now four major banks are joining for the commercial launch of their mobile services. As a result, 32 mobile applications are already available for millions of Italian consumers, comprising debit, credit and prepaid services. With an ecosystem currently consisting of over 200,000 contactless POS terminals, service usage is expected to grow exponentially.
The secure and scalable infrastructure SIA provides in its hub ensures full interoperability with new service providers, who can be accommodated seamlessly. Since the SIA group operates across 40 different European countries, the potential for further development and growth of the NFC ecosystem beyond Italy is strong. Whether in-house or as a service, a hub infrastructure relying on international standards can provide interoperability across multiple participants and allow any newcomer in the ecosystem to instantly reach a large number of users beyond its existing consumer base. This is ideally suited for large scale service deployment and service adoption.
As NFC grows in popularity, similar announcements have followed from banking and telecom sectors all around the world. In December, Valyou in Norway, TWMP in Taiwan andSemble in New Zealand all decided to provide mobile services through a hub infrastructure run by our Trusted Service Hub.
As financial services markets develop, it’s important that hubs are able to evolve over time and adapt to new standards. This is what our Trusted Service Hub features, supporting field proven SE based frameworks and supporting emerging cloud-based tokenization standards through HCE. This way any Service Provider joining can be sure to protect its initial investment.