Large Italian payment card processor SIA plans to launch what it hopes will become an interoperable trusted service management hub for Italy to connect banks to telcos.
SIA, owned by Italy’s largest banks, would provision payment applications over the air to mobile operator SIM cards. The company said it proposes an “independent” TSM, which it calls TSM EasyCard. It expects to use the TSM for NFC rollouts this year. SIA has hired France-based Gemalto to provide the TSM platform.
“The idea is to have an infrastructure for all the banks and all the telcos,” the company told NFC Times. “SIA expects to progress step by step. It’s the best way to push for NFC service. It’s independent from the bank and telco.”
Such major Italian banks as Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit own major shares of SIA, which also offers issuing and acquiring services. Other banks, along with Telecom Italia, own a smaller share of the company.
SIA has served as TSM for two NFC pilots to date, including one launched last October by Italy’s Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, or BNL, and telcos Vodafone Italia and Three Italia. The trial launched in Rome with about 150 users, putting a MasterCard PayPass application onto SIMs inserted in Samsung Galaxy S III NFC phones.
SIA was also involved in a smaller pilot with UBI Banca and Vodafone Italia.
Both BNL, which is part of part of France-based BNP Paribas, and UBI Banca are minority shareholders of SIA.
In a description of its TSM EasyCard on its Web site, SIA said that by using the TSM service, a cardholder with an NFC SIM card “could receive on the SIM itself, in just a few minutes and in total security, the virtual card associated with the physical card, to carry out contactless (and) remote payments using their smartphone.”
Gemalto will provide the TSM technology platform for SIA and may operate it. The France-based vendor said in an announcement last week that it was offering its TSM platform for service providers to SIA, “operated by Gemalto's European secure data center.” The center is certified to handle provisioning of NFC applications supporting both Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass.
Gemalto said the SIA TSM service would be commercially available by mid-2013. The vendor estimated that up to 200,000 contactless payment terminals would be available in Italy by the end of 2013.
A SIA representative told NFC Times it had already signed up two banks to use its TSM service, including BNL, and two telcos so far would apparently be willing to tie into the SIA hub, Vodafone and Three Italia, according to the representative.
In Italy, PosteMobile, a mobile virtual network operator owned by major postal service operator Poste Italiane, has launched commercial NFC service, while Telecom Italia and Intesa Sanpaolo have been gearing up for a rollout. Neither is using the SIA TSM.