STMicroelectronics and Gemalto partner for secure NFC

STMicroelectronics and Gemalto have partnered to develop security services for near-field communication mobile products.

The partnership, announced on Monday, is based around joint development of secure near-field communication (NFC) products. NFC is a contactless data-transfer technology with many applications, including wireless payments and information exchange.

"By combining some of the most advanced NFC-related technologies from both companies, ST and Gemalto will bring leading and highly secure solutions to the market to further accelerate the deployment of NFC services across the world," Marie-France Florentine, a general manager for STMicro, said in a statement.

According to the statement, the two companies plan to develop NFC services that pair Gemalto's operating system with STMicro's ST33 EAL5+ chipset. The products are being developed to boost the adoption of NFC services, specifically in consumer applications such as contactless payment, transportation ticketing, personal data protection and device integrity, the companies said.

The applications will combine public key cryptography that matches the GP 2.2 and JavaCard 3.0.1 specifications, and will be available as a system-in-package version combined with STMicro's ST21NFCA NFC controller, or as a stand-alone element in DFN or microSD packages. Memory sizes for the products will range up to 768KB.