NFC Forum: HCE Provides ‘Additional’ Means to Perform NFC Transactions (March 20, 2014)
As Host Card Emulation (HCE) gains momentum and questions continue about whether mass acceptance of NFC technology will ever come, the NFC Forum has issued a position statement on HCE, which emulates an NFC card in the cloud, eliminating the need for a secure element and trusted service manager for NFC applications, such as payments.
“We view [HCE] as an exciting development for the NFC market because it provides an additional means by which to perform NFC transactions. With HCE, transactions take place using credentials stored in the cloud or on the host processor of the NFC-enabled mobile device rather than a tamper-resistant secure element, such as an embedded security chip, SIM or microSD card,” according to the association of manufacturers, applications developers, financial services institutions and others formed to advance NFC and standards.
However, the organization stresses that service providers must evaluate and determine the best place to “store credentials, keeping in mind the trade-off between security risks and convenience. Each model has its merits depending on the use case.”
In a recent poll, visitors to Paybefore’s Website were asked, “Can HCE reignite NFC?” Forty-five percent of respondents said yes, 36 percent responded no and 18 percent said maybe. (To participate in the current poll and view past results, visit the homepage and scroll down. Pay Poll is on the right, below Featured Videos.)
