GlobalPlatform, the international specification body for smart card infrastructure, and ETSI’s Smart Card Platform (SCP) committee, the standardization body which provided the core specifications for more than 3 billion smart cards in the past year alone, have maintained a general liaison relationship for a number of years, to harmonize their respective activities in the fields of over-the-air (OTA) application download and management of applications. As a result of this previous collaboration, over two billion SIM cards worldwide are estimated to use the technology defined by the organizations to enable OTA application downloads for 3G and GSM mobile networks. By signing the MoU the two parties have formally strengthened their collaboration efforts, and plan to replicate the achievements of their joint initiatives into other areas of their respective offerings. Initial activity will focus on developing technology that will facilitate the delivery through the SIM of contactless services which ‚connect‘ multiple sectors such as mobile, healthcare, banking and transit, with a simple model that will enable end users to manage their active contactless services in a mobile handset. www.globalplatform.org www.etsi.org