The Need for Integration in NFC Mobile Payments

Abstract

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short range wireless technology that provides contactless transmission of data between devices. With an NFC-enabled device, users can exchange information from one device to another and make payments using their NFC devices as means of their identity. Since the main players such as service providers and secure element issuers have crucial roles in a multi-application mobile environment similar to NFC, managing such an environment has become very challenging. One of the technologies which potentially ensure secure and flexible NFC transactions is cloud computing that offers wide range of advantages compare to using secure element as a single entity in an NFC device. This approach provides a comprehensive leadership of the cloud provider towards managing and controlling customer's information where it allows the phone's secure element to deal with authentication mechanisms rather than storing and managing confidential transaction data. In this paper, we further discuss the previously proposed NFC Cloud Wallet model and present a new insight that defines an integrated framework based on a reliable relationship between the merchant and the mobile network operator. We then carry out an analysis of such relationship to explore different scenarios that arise from this approach.