NXP Showcases Breakthrough Microcontroller IC for Contactless Smart Card Applications

New MIFARE Plus featuring enhanced security and easy upgrade capabilities demonstrated at CarteS 2008

NXP Semiconductors, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, will launch its state-of-the art microcontroller smart card IC MIFARE Plus at CarteS 2008, 4-6 November in Paris, France. MIFARE Plus is the latest addition to NXP’s MIFARE family of chips, the leading technology in the market for contactless smart card ICs used in transport networks and access management worldwide.



At CarteS, NXP will demonstrate multiple levels of enhanced security available to customers with MIFARE Plus, including 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and the easy migration path from existing MIFARE Classic implementations. The chip complements NXP’s leading range of contactless microcontroller ICs, such as MIFARE DESFire and SmartMX, which are already providing superior levels of performance and security in the automatic fare collection, access management, eGovernment and banking markets.



Jonathan Collins from ABI Research points out that “NXP’s MIFARE technology has helped push contactless smart cards into transport ticketing, payment and access management. MIFARE Plus presents a ready path for existing MIFARE contactless transportation schemes to migrate to a new level of security and raises the security for new deployments and applications“.



Customers and partners in the contactless applications market have welcomed the advanced capabilities of NXPs latest offering in the MIFARE portfolio:



“We see major advantages with MIFARE Plus for seamlessly upgrading infrastructures to leading-edge security in a variety of contactless applications systems while providing an optimized security-cost ratio,” said Pascal Roux, Marketing Manager, at Affiliated Computer Services Solutions, a global provider of business process and information technology services. “Any smart card infrastructure requires periodic security upgrades to ensure the viability of its application for its users, and NXP has always demonstrated commitment and agility to meet the growing demands of the contactless smart card IC market,”



“To cater to the demand for contactless Inlays, it is important that suppliers maintain quick turnaround times and the ability to ramp up production capacity to accommodate customer demand,” said Manfred Rietzler, CTO and Management Board Member at Inlay supplier, SMARTRAC, N.V. “The design of MIFARE Plus makes it effortless to integrate into the existing production environment; thus, ensuring that SMARTRAC can almost immediately feed customer requirements for Inlays with improved security features.”



Placing confidence in the enhanced security and performance of NXP’s MIFARE Plus contactless smart card IC, Jeffrey Chang, Vice General Manager at EasyCard Corporation, the service provider integrating and operating the contactless smartcard ticketing system for buses, metro, and public off-road car parks in Taipei, said: “Security and privacy are essential requirements of Taipei’s contactless smart card ticketing infrastructure. We welcome the advanced security capabilities of NXP’s MIFARE Plus and see clear benefits in upgrading existing MIFARE installations with complete service continuity.”



Security, performance, privacy and ease of use are at the heart of MIFARE Plus. It is the only smart card IC of its class to offer strong AES encryption for authentication, integrity and confidentiality. Introduction of MIFARE Plus’s AES security avoids any performance degradation to current infrastructure service levels. Furthermore, MIFARE Plus chips comprise a number of additional security features which, when used optimally in the infrastructure, provide a system that prevents individuals from being identified and tracked by others. Finally, migration planning is made easier as MIFARE Plus supports the pre-issuance of new cards; co-existence of current and new cards; and software based infrastructure upgrades.
Availability

First samples of MIFARE Plus are being demonstrated at Cartes and will be released within 2008, supporting first customer roll-outs from mid 2009.