Mifare emulation has been around for some years. Mifare emulation simply refers to an application running on a chip card operating system. The application emulates the native mifare chip and responds the mifare readers as if it is a mifare chip. Of course there are some considerations when implementing a mifare emulation. First of all, it is not native mifare and the terminal software needs to be updated accordingly to recognise the chip. Secondly, mifare emulation is not as fast as a native mifare chip so some parameters must be updated to transact with the mifare emulation applet.

These have been done since some time, but Gemalto has started a new era by implementing the DESFire application on a SIM/UICC. Even the owner of the technology -NXP, does not officialy have DESFire emulation yet. It’s a huge thing in terms of innovation. However there’s still some time before a DESFire enable transportation system is to accept an NFC handset device with a Gemalto SIM/UICC.

Gemalto has been aggressive on the contactless market almost since its start and this is clearly a result of it. Read the full press release here.

In my perspective, NFC was the rising star of the Mobile World Congress 2010. In the first day of the event, the agenda of the session was mobile money. A balanced selection of speakers from carriers to technology companies provided a mind opening content.

The first outcome of the day for me was that NFC is something that you can not expect a single task, but there is a need for companions. I mean, a simple mobile wallet application will not be enough for people to make it a killer application. Mobile coupon style add-ons as well as making the content accesible to user through the handset is crucial. People already have credit cards, debit cards, transportation cards, etc for making the payment. Why would the user have switch it to a handset instead of a card?

Secondly, all the parties are ready to jump on the band wagon but it still needs some time for the boom. We’ve already seen many pilots and even a commercial roll out in Japan, but there’s still some more time ahead.

Mobile World Congress 2010 had also an NFC event for platinum pass holders with a Samsung handset.

It was interesting to see that SIM cards are having more and more abilities for mobile payment applications. Gemalto announced a new SIM card which is able to run a DESFire ticketing application. I also had a product presentation of a SIM platform with NFC support from Giesecke&Devrient.

Finally, BarclayCard announced an iPhone application which can accept contact EMV chip cards with the PIN support. Just like the US version running from magnetic stripe interface, Barclay’s one has a contact chip card reader attached to the iPhone and the terminal software runs on the iPhone OS.