A platform of opportunity
At Fidesmo, we actively work to develop our platform and give all members – whether it’s payment providers, banks, consumers or device manufacturers – new and more exciting opportunities. That’s why we have so many ongoing developments and joint pilot projects.
New secure elements
Most recently, our partnership with leading chip manufacturer Infineon has led to the launch of two new chips, known as secure elements, that are supported on our platform. The next-gen chips can be easily embedded into wearables for contactless transactions. The Infineon SECORA™ Pay W is a plug-and-play secure element, while SECORA™ Connect S is a multi-form factor chip with Bluetooth functionality.
By adding the Infineon chips to our platform, Fidesmo OEM partners have an even broader selection of secure elements to choose from to meet their product and service design needs while delivering a great user experience. All Fidesmo supported secure elements offer tokenization based payments which is more secure than a standard contactless card payment, and is a vital way to counter card fraud. Other contactless Fidesmo transactional services that can be done using our platform and secure elements include digital identities (eID) and public transport ticketing.
Seamless provisioning with iOS and Android
The two new SECORA™ options take up very little space in a wearable and are fully compatible with iOS. They support seamless provisioning via iOS devices for connection, tokenization and activation. This means wearables can now be quickly connected to payment cards via the Fidesmo app on many of today’s phones.
New retail opportunities
With smooth and instant card connection across device operating systems, there are new retail opportunities for OEMs. Why? The sale of contactless payment-ready wearables is easier when customers can connect their cards at time of purchase, in the store. Thanks to this, we expect to see more of our wearable partners selling their products in physical stores, as a compliment to those sold online. Secondly, iOS compatibility has been a prerequisite for some banks to join our platform. We now expect to see more banks join the platform which should significantly grow the number of users that opt to pay contactless with Fidesmo Pay. To do that, they’ll want a cool wearable. Today that’s a ring, bracelet, key ring, or watch-strap, but who knows about tomorrow…
A multi-sourcing approach
What’s important for us is that we are building relationships with multiple chip manufacturers to provide our partners with a great choice of secure elements and the opportunity to offer new services to users. Current chip supply shortages also make it important to establish relationships with multiple suppliers to ensure the supply of secure elements does not become an issue moving forward.
Driving the future
As the number of users increases and contactless transactions become the de facto payment in-store payment method, we expect the demands on what our chips can do to change. But as a device agnostic and service provider agnostic company, our focus is always on ensuring end users and our partners get the best services. Contactless is the future and we are helping to drive that through hardware, software, and service development.
Meet Alana Kennett
Alana is an industrial/graphic designer turned tech specialist who combines these two areas to manage the delivery of game-changing solutions at Fidesmo.
As Product Manager she has worked closely with Infineon to ensure the next-gen chips will make a big impact for all members of the platform.
