INSIDE and FIME will work in close cooperation with their customers in this partnership to help develop the most effective test and certification process, and plan to present a first version of this process and associated tools and services to their common customers early next year. Through this cooperative effort, INSIDE and FIME will be able to offer their customers greater visibility into the testing and certification requirements at an early stage during development of their NFC mobile handset products, and provide them with products, tools, know-how and services to ensure compliance. The partnership also intends to consult with various standards bodies, including the NFC Forum, ETSI, ISO and payment and transport associations, providing valuable results based on their experience to boost or amend current certification standards. NFC devices not only have to comply with the NFC Forum’s requirements and include the minimum interoperability level, but also with ETSI standards for HCI and SWP protocols. In addition, they need to be able to cohabitate with traditional NFC applications, as well as a large range of legacy applications and infrastructure combining payment, transport, access control, loyalty and other applications. On top of all those requirements, there is the issue of connecting to the SIM card or other secure element (SE). As a result, the complex relationship between the NFC chip and the handset application framework requires a new dimension in testing to ensure an optimal interoperability level for contactless applications. To reach the full promise of NFC from day one, this interoperability issue has to be taken into account for the entire NFC device design, manufacturing and go-to-market process. “Our partnership is uniquely positioned to embark on this mission, bringing to bear not only our combined expertise in NFC technology, but also early access to customers engaged in NFC product developments who need to ensure interoperability when they go to market,” said Vincent Poty, sales director at FIME. “Through our partnership, INSIDE will be able to provide an optimal interoperability level for their NFC chips and tags to ensure their customers develop NFC-compliant products, and FIME will be able to market the test tools and test services these customers will need to ensure NFC interoperability.” www.fime.com www.insidecontactless.com