NFC phones track social service delivery in The Netherlands
29 August, 2007
category: Contactless, Financial, NFC
Social services in the city of Breda in The Netherlands are paying for services and these service delivery sessions are being tracked using contactless cards and NFC-equipped mobile phones. Citizens requiring social care services receive contactless card with credits for obtaining services. When a caregiver visits the patient, the caregiver’s NFC phone is tapped on the citizen’s card. Another tap at the close of the session results in a log of start and end times for record keeping as well as credit deduction for payment.
Adaptive Planet, RFCyber and MICHAEL LETTERER-PM&C Launch the Industry’s First Commercial NFC Mobile POS Deployment for a Social Care Project in The Netherlands
BREDA, The Netherlands, Aug. 29 /PRNewswire/ – Adaptive Planet BV, the project leading system integrator, and its project partners, RFCyber and MICHAEL LETTERER-PM&C, today announced the industry’s first commercial Near Field Communication (NFC) Mobile POS deployment, using NFC chip technology from NXP Semiconductors (formerly Philips Semiconductors) and NFC enabled mobile phones from Nokia.
Citizens of Breda, who need social care services, are issued contactless e-voucher cards storing personal ID and credits (e-tokens) for services. Social care workers carry a NFC enabled mobile phone. The phone is a pre-personalized NFC Mobile POS, deployed by the RFCyber OTA (Over-The-Air) provisioning service, which follows Java Card standard and Global Platform security standard. To check-in at a customer, the social care worker touches with the mobile phone the customer’s e-voucher card for identification and a timestamp for starting the service. After a service is delivered, the social care worker touches with the mobile phone again the e-voucher card to check-out, a timestamp for ending the service. A deduction of the pre-paid e-token from the e-voucher card is done. These transactions and service records are stored in the NFC Mobile POS, which can in turn be uploaded to a back-end server in batch via OTA. In addition, social care workers can use the NFC Mobile POS to let the customers purchase more e-tokens, by using the OTA technology for the top-up of the customer’s e-voucher card.
This deployment provides simple, efficient and accurate record tracking for the social care services offering organization “Werk aan de Wijk” in Breda. By using NFC enabled mobile phone technology, resources can effectively be allocated for respective services. For the end-users, this new product makes the purchase and handling of social care services much more easy and convenient. To make it even more convenient, the next step will be to change from working with e-tokens to e-payment, and by this to take out the use of hard cash. It is estimated that the clients will be used to the e-voucher card system within 3-6 months. After this period, the next technology step towards e-payment will be taken.
The state-of-the-art NFC Mobile POS, as a cost-effective, powerful NFC enabled mobile phone device with Internet connection via GPRS, is a revolutionary solution for enterprise applications. The NFC based technologies (hardware and software) used in this social care project, conform to the NFC Forum (http://www.nfc-forum.org/) product specifications.
The companies say that this project is another key milestone in the creation of NFC based ecosystems, which will enable new, value adding applications for various industries and users.
NFC based technologies and applications are fast growing market fields. ABI Research predicts about 292M mobile phones will be shipped with NFC in the year 2012. The key application focus of NFC based technologies, is currently in the fields of e-payment and e-ticketing/e-vouchers.
About Adaptive Planet, The Netherlands (http://www.adaptiveplanet.com)/
Adaptive Planet developed a unique and revolutionary technology for softwaredevelopment, called The Activator. Using this technology is simple and avoids almost all classical problems softwaredevelopers have been and still are confronted with. Although the technology can be used in backoffice, middleware and mobile environments, Adaptive Planet’s focus is the mobile environment. We offer an intelligent mobile services platform which automatically manages a complete heterogeneous mobile environment.
About RFCyber, USA (http://www.rfcyber.com)/
RFCyber, a leading NFC solution provider in the NFC Ecosystem, provides NFC based mobile and electronic payment solutions that allow secure, efficient, and convenient transactions through both private and open networks. The products and solutions include digital wallet, OTA and Internet provisioning platform, OTA and Internet epayment transaction platform, transportation epurse enabling solution, contactless smart-card store value solution, mobile POS solution, and home based solution. RFCyber enables mobile and electronic payments with NFC.
About MICHAEL LETTERER-PM&C (ML-PMC), Germany (http://www.ml-pmc.com)/
ML-PMC is an international acting project management and consulting company. The company was established based on over 15 years of industry experience in the international high-tech market. ML-PMC and its partner companies develop and implement innovative RFID/NFC products and applications. Furthermore ML-PMC supports its customers and partner companies in innovation management and international business development. The ML-PMC spin-off activity, SCP United Germany, will soon become the e-services enabling platform provider and service partner for the international customers.
About Near Field Communication (NFC):
Jointly developed by NXP Semiconductors and Sony, NFC is a combination of contactless identification and interconnection technologies that enables secure short-range communication between electronic devices, such as mobile phones, PDA’s, computers and payments terminals via a fast and easy wireless connection. NFC offers a simple, touch-based solution that allows consumers to exchange information and to access content and services in an intuitive way.
NFC operates in the 13.56 MHz frequency range, over a distance of typically a few centimeters and combines the functions of a contactless reader, a contactless card and peer-to-peer functionality on a single chip. The underlying layers of NFC technology are ISO (18092), ECMA, and ETSI (340) standards. It is an open interface platform that allows fast and automatic set-up of wireless networks, which also works as a virtual connector for existing cellular, Bluetooth and wireless 802.11 devices. NFC is compatible with Sony’s FeliCa(TM) card and the broadly established contactless smart card infrastructure based on ISO 14443A, which is used in NXP’s MIFARE(R) technology.
Explore more developments dealing with the implementation of Near Field Communications, a short-range wireless technology that promises to revolutionize contactless identification, payment, access, and more. Click to visit NFCNews.