Texas Instruments Releases Contactless Chip for Micropayment, ID Applications

(Product News, 16 Sep 2008)

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has launched a new secure multi-purpose contactless chip designed for the growing closed-loop contactless micropayment, loyalty, ID and access application markets. TI's new ISO/IEC 14443 Type B chip—the RF-HCT-WRC5-KP221—combines processing speed, advanced radio frequency (RF) performance and industry-standard security with a flexible and configurable memory that supports up to five applications on one contactless card or token.

A number of closed-loop applications, particularly in Asia and in Central and South America, are seeking the speed, convenience and security of the ISO/IEC 14443 standards-based contactless technology that TI's secure multi-purpose chip provides. These applications, which include private label payment and loyalty/membership programs, closed-loop micropayments, secure ID and corporate access control, can be implemented individually or in combination on the same card or token. For example, a retailer could implement customer payment and loyalty, or a university campus may want to combine building access, payment and secure student and employee ID.

TI's secure contactless chip incorporates a number of security features to provide data privacy in sensitive applications and to protect against cloning and replay attacks. Dynamic encryption is achieved using National Institute of Standards and Technology-approved Triple DES and SHA-1 crypto-algorithms as well as an ANSI X9.63 based session key security. A 128-bit unique session key is generated for each transaction, and the communication between the tag and reader can be encrypted to provide a high-level of confidentiality. The TI product also allows the tag and reader to mutually authenticate each other during every communication session, thus only a trusted tag and reader are authorized to complete a transaction.

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