OREANDA-NEWS. February 27, 2012. i-Free and NXP Semiconductors presented a package of NFC solutions for business and everyday life at a press gathering in St. Petersburg. The NFC services on show were developed by i-Free using technology solutions provided by NXP Semiconductors.

NXP Semiconductors, one of the originators of the NFC standard and a global leader in NFC solutions, has teamed up with i-Free, which was one of the first to develop and pilot NFC-based products and services in the CIS.  

NXP has reported considerable progress in NFC penetration throughout the mobile services industry in 2011. NFC is embedded in over 40 million smartphones now on the market, representing around 10% of all phones shipped last year. 

“It looks like 2012 will be the definitive year for NFC technology,” said Viktor Sestrevatovsky, Director of Business Development in Banking, Shipping and NFC Applications for Russia and the CIS at NXP Semiconductors. “We also believe this is the year when NFC will take off big time in Russia. Around the world, 15 OEM manufacturers are now working on over 130 mobile phones and pads with NFC capability, and some of these devices are already finding their way onto the market in Russia. It also helps that the groundwork is already firmly in place for the future NFC ecosystem. Touch-free technology is widely used in public transit systems in all major cities worldwide, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and elsewhere in Russia.”

The partnership between NXP and i-Free has yielded a range of services helpful in many different industries: retail, banking, transport, healthcare, education, public administration, services sector, and others. 

The technological platform for the new services are NXP’s SmartMX microchips, which support MIFARE™ NFC card emulation. The NXP SmartMX microchips meet the highest standards in safety, including encryption with a public access key based on an RSA sequence.

These microchips come with a range of proprietary security features, such as Secure Fetch – a technology providing reliable protection from light or laser attacks. It also protects specific areas of the microchip at hardware level. NXP SmartMX microchips are used in ATM cards and the electronic IDs of most EU residents. 

NXP’s NFC solutions are integrated into i-Free’s payment system, which people use to pay for goods and services with their mobile phone at any point of sale. All you have to do to pay is place your mobile phone in front of the scanner.  

The NFC service package, unveiled by i-Free at the press event, featured access control solutions for public transit and educational institutions, retail payment solutions, solutions for vending, parking, and pay-terminals in other fields of business.  

i-Free also showed some mobile phones in action: phones with NFC microchips and phones adapted to operate in a compatible NFC environment.

The majority of the showcased services has already passed the testing and is fully ready to go commercial.   

“In a modern world, it is not easy to find a ready-to-use technology that can be used virtually anywhere,” said Kirill Gorynya, CEO of i-Free Innovаtions. “Universal applicability is a rare property that very few technologies have. This one does, which promises it great opportunities in business and in the day-to-day life of millions.”