[Thesis research] NFC practical example

[leorou]

Hello!

I would like to ask the community for some guidance, since you guys probably have far more experience with NFC in general.

I'm currently studying Computer Engineering in Uruguay's Catholic University and my final thesis assignment requires some investigation on payment platforms for mobile devices applicable for my country. After some time researching I decided to put all of my efforts into NFC as it appears to be the best way to go for any implementation of such a platform.

For the thesis I need to provide a small proof-of-concept example, not only to prove feasibility but also to reinforce the conclusion that this technology is the best available.

It's at this juncture that I need your help! Specifically, hardware. If you guys could provide any information about a cheap, yet suitable, NFC card reader and mobile phone brand/model to perform such a experiment would be greatly appreciated.

If it is not much trouble I would also like to ask if you know of any related documentation, papers, open projects in the world, or whatever you think would be relevant to my research.

Thank you very much in advance.
Leo.

[mahbub_s60]

SCM is one set of tool that you can use, If I remember correctly, it comes from Germany and cost 180 Euoro. In market there are better one also. You could search with Google.
After some times (I am not 100% sure about it)C7 will have the secure element in places, I am not sure the details about S40 phones (see some spec of S40 phone). With current C7 version we don't have SE in place.

[SoulBlade]

wondering if there was any update to this thread regarding leorou's thesis ?

[mahbub_s60]

wondering if there was any update to this thread regarding leorou's thesis ?

What do you mean really?

-Probably he need some NFC enable devices , phones and even some PC based reader and writer. Now Nokia C7 is out and that can be upgraded to have the NFC software. If you need phones (Nokia offers a packet that includes, tags+ C7). You just need to contact Nokia. And about NFC itself, we can consult with Nokia developer wiki pages. To know more about NFC NFC forum is the best places, they have all the specifications that you need to know. If there is further questions please ask again, we shall be able to help.

[Haapakanni]

Hello leorou! Your thesis sounds very interesting as well as mahbub_s60' comments regarding C7. I would be more than curious to know if there is some workaround to provide secure payments without the secure element with the Nokia C7? Perhaps encrypted communication over NFC P2P between NFC reader and C7? And how to store secure enough way the sensitive payment data in the C7 and what about verification of the transaction... Good ideas?

[leorou]

Thanks all for the replies and interest!

I don't know anything about that Haapakanni.

What I know is that recently, Inside Secure, a french company innovated with a new technology regarding NFC. Basically, the NFC antenna can be embedded on a SIM Card, letting old phones (with sufficient application processor power) get into NFC without any hardware restriction. After that announcement, the GSM Association and 45 of its members, biggest mobile operators in the world, expressed themselves about taking NFC as a mobile payment standard. That is good news, don't you think?

Anyway, I finished my thesis already, without any experimentation whatsoever. I have more than enough will to experiment on this after researching so much on NFC, so any ideas on the matter, on how to test NFC and such, would be still appreciated.

Regards.