Texas Instruments is to supply RFID chips for Mastercards PayPass RFID cashless payment cards and tokens. The RFID chips are fully ISO/IEC 14443 compliant and offer the high security required for financial transactions. Key benefits are seen as faster transaction times than with either credit cards or cash plus greater customer convenience leading to increased sales for retailers. Pilot schemes have shown increased transaction values of some 20 to 30% when RFID tokens are used compared with cash.
American Express has also begun roll-out of its ExpressPay RFID payment system which is also based on TIs ISO/IEC 1443 chips.
"The financial services industry increasingly recognizes that ISO/IEC 14443-based RFID solutions provide the stringent levels of security required for conducting payment transactions," said Shawn Rogers, director, wireless commerce and Tag-it products, Texas Instruments RFid Systems. " We're working with leading bank card issuers and credit card companies to bring these highly reliable and secure RFID solutions to this market."
Higher security.
TI's new 13.56 MHz RFID chip is the latest in a series of solutions based on the company's ISO/IEC 14443 RFID technology platform. This proven platform features products with universally accepted and standardized security cryptography, using National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) approved crypto algorithms, including Triple DES and SHA-1. The cards allow customers to pay simply by presenting their card or token to a reader without having to swipe credit cards, sign payment slips or provide cash allowing mush faster and more convenient payment for goods and services.
The latest ISO/IEC 14443 standard allows for an increased level of security because it supports significantly faster rates of data exchange (up to 848 kbits per second), enabling more complex security and encryption between an RFID card and reader without affecting the user's experience. As an added feature, proximity read ranges for products based on the ISO/IEC 14443 platform are reduced to 4 centimetres (roughly 1.5 inches), further increasing the security of the transaction.
American Express recently announced the roll out of its ExpressPay RFID payment system based on RFID-enabled tokens and credit cards in the US. The new contactless payment system is already operational with ExpressPay-enabled POS terminals installed in 485 CVS stores in Arizona, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kansas and Missouri and CVS plans a full roll-out to its entire fleet of more than 5,300 stores by mid-2005. American Express also announced plans to expand ExpressPay's availability to consumers nationwide in 2005.
Market research with pilot participants confirmed that consumers view convenience and simplicity of use as two of the major benefits. Important merchant benefits include reduced transaction time and increased spending relative to cash. American Express studies have shown the length of time for ExpressPay transactions is faster than both cash and traditional credit transactions. In addition, ExpressPay customers increased their average transaction size by 20% to 30% compared with their cash spending.
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