TORO SELECTED AS FINALIST FOR SESAMES INNOVATION AWARD

Akami™ competes for best mobile application.

Hong Kong, November 9^th 2009 – TORO, the pure player for NFC mobile platform development, is pleased to announce that their product AKAMI™ as been selected as a finalist for the prestigious SESAMES INNOVATION AWARDS in the MOBILE category.

“We are proud to have been chosen as a finalist from among the 309 applications competing for the SESAMES Innovation Awards, and we salute the jury members for short-listing a startup company alongside the 3 industry giants Gemalto, Oberthur and NXP,” said Laurent Renard, Chief Executive Officer, Toro Development Limited. “Our engineers have been developing the Akami™ software suite with a true vision of the distribution of NFC services to end-users”, he added. “Our competitors for the SESAMES – but partners in business – have made the NFC technology work, and now TORO will help focus on the NFC user-experience and user relationship management, a key success factor for NFC applications adoption”.

About Akami™:

Akami™ is a complete mobile software suite that provides a User Management System for the distribution to end-users of NFC services, whether secure (i.e. payment, transport, loyalty, tickets, etc.) or non-secure (i.e. marketing, CRM, social network, games, etc.). Akami™ is a market-ready solution that comprises a mobile client (with versions for all mobile platforms: J2ME, WM, Symbian, etc.), a widget system, a SDK, and a full-featured back-office system with APIs for 3^rd parties. Akami™ addresses the markets of mobile operators and/or TSMs.

About TORO:

TORO is a startup company founded in 2007 to serve the emerging NFC ecosystem, and offer a compelling user-experience across mobile, web and the reality. TORO is positioned as the crossroads of smartcard, mobile and GUI design. TORO is also the founder and organizer of the monthly Mobile Monday events in Taipei, Taiwan. Toro Development Limited is headquartered in Hong Kong, with offices in Taipei and Paris. For more information, please visit www.toro-asia.com

We have the great pleasure to inform the NFC ecosystem that Akami, TORO’s main product, was selected among 23 candidates for the SESAMES Awards at CARTES 2009 in the category MOBILE. The winner will be unveiled on November 16th at the Théâtre de Paris, the night before CARTES 2009 starts. TORO is competing with heavyweight players in the NFC ecosystem: Oberthur Technologies, Gemalto and NXP.

Well, we are not sure of the criteria of the jury, let us just hope they like innovative startups and they understand that winning a SESAMES Award for a small (but promising) startup like TORO can make a difference, whereas it is just a matter of corporate pride for big companies.

We’ll keep you posted!!!

NXP announced this June 2nd that their PN544 NFC chipset is finally ready and available for sampling. That is the piece of information that the entire NFC ecosystem was waiting for since the GSMA officially announced that they backed Gemalto’s proposal to turn the SIM card into THE secure element! Now, handset makers will be able to start their NFC phone developments and finally flowd the market with SWP compliant handsets. Phones, phones, phones! It is said in the small NFC world that a carrier needs to propose a minimum of 3 NFC handsets to users to start launching their NFC services. That might well be (at long last) the beginning of it all.

Let’s not be too optimistic though, and let’s not underestimate the capacity of the NFC ecosystem to find themselves new problems that will delay the NFC market a little more. PN544 is almost a famous brand name, let’s hope it will be remembered as a main milestone for NFC.

I would like to comment on ping.ping, Belgacom’s initiative to launch NFC mobile payment in Belgium. They launched ping.ping a little over a month ago (after duly buying Tunz, originally a SMS-based mobile payment software start-up), and it did not make much noise, although I think what they are doing is a very smart move.

While everyone is awaiting the ever-delayed NFC phones, Belgacom’s team decided to make a bold move and whip the market a bit. They launched ping.ping (named after the shortest man on the planet – Chinese), which, for the end user, is a service that materializes as a RFID sticker on his phone, and an account on www.pingping.be.

The RFID sticker (Mifare DES-fire) is only an identifier. Merchants do have a NFC phone, but only to acquire the transaction. Merchants have a merchant ID, they the amount on they ping.ping mobile interface, and the whole batch of data goes online directly to the Belgacom servers. If the merchant’s service is activated for the user, and if the ping.ping account is loaded with enough cash, then the transaction is accepted. Yes, everything is done online. From the ping.ping website, end-users can chose which services/where they want to pay with ping.ping (parking, supermarkets, fast-food, etc.), and which account of theirs should be debited (bank account, Proximus phone bill, etc.). [How it works.pdf]

This is not our vision of NFC services, but still, Belgacom is creating a brand name, deploying services, creating habits, and – most importantly- growing a user base. And this is the beauty of the service: ping.ping sales force goes to a service provider, says a parking management company for example, they sign a deal, and Belgacom immediately grow their ping.ping user base by 30,000 people. These end-users trade-in their contactless parking card for a ping.ping sticker… They then can decide, once logged on the website, to subscribe to more ping.ping services.

So Belgacom is turning the hindrance created by the lack of phones into a competitive advantage: the longer the delay for NFC phones to be available, the larger the ping.ping user base. And when NFC phones are available in numbers, they’ll kindly propose their users to switch to “mobile ping.ping”. Brilliant! …and inexpensive (ping.ping pilot= 500 Mifare stickers vs. MNOs giving away 500 Nokia 6212 to their customers)

Cell Idea adds NFC to any Bluetooth phone
UPDATED: Consumers can simply pair the company’s new ‘With Me’ device, expected to retail at US$25, with their existing Bluetooth phone in order to NFC-enable their handset.

Hong-Kong based Cell Idea has launched ‘With Me’, an NFC device that adds near field communication functionality to any Bluetooth-equipped mobile handset.The device works by having the capability to both communicate with the phone using Bluetooth and communicate with any reader conforming to ISO 14443 Type A, Type B or FeliCa contactless communication standards for payments, loyalty applications, ticketing, access control and more.

And Toro is proudly to partner with Cell-Idea to provide our akami as the interface for With Me.

Cell Idea, which has also developed the NFC microSD solution used in Fonelabs’ new low-cost NFC phones, has produced two demonstration videos, using a loyalty and e-wallet application developed by Toro, that give a clear idea of how the phone/NFC device combination works and llustrates the potential functionality:

Even though “With Me” is not available to the consumer market yet, but we certainly think this will definitely give NFC market a big push, provide the real NFC user experience, after all, NFC will only take off if end-users really like it.

As of 2007, similar schemes are also in effect in other European cities, including Aix-en-Provence, Caen (V’eol), Rouen, Barcelona (Bicing), Bari, Brussels, Copenhagen, Luxembourg (Vel’oh), Lyon (Vélo’v), Nantes (Bicloo), Toulouse, Marseille Stockholm, Pamplona (Cemusa), OYBike, Call a Bike (Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart, Munich, Karlsruhe), Copenhagen/Helsinki/Aarhus (CIOS), Oslo, Sandnes, Seville (Sevici) and Vienna. Schemes have also been proposed for London, Melbourne and Dublin. However, it is remarkable that U-bike is probably the first bike hire program in the world where your standard transit pass card is used to hire the bikes as well, thus making them an extension of the city wide public transport system.

What is certainly interesting in the case of Taipei is that “U-bike” becomes the 4th application of the now ubiquitous EasyCard launched in 2002 and managed by TSCC (Taipei Smart Card Corporation, founded in 2000), after (1) MRT and buses, (2) public parking lots, and (3) park meters on the street. The 10 million contactless cards (Mifare technology) are getting more and more popular in the Taipei area, and close to reaching the popularity of its Hong-Konguee counterpart Octopus. Payment in taxis with Easycard was abandoned after a not-so-successful trial in year 2004, and is now replaced by the Visa Paywave application (see previous post).

Taiwan is definitely comforting its position to potentially become for world leader for NFC deployment, with the 3 main mobile network operators launching their NFC services at the end of 2009, and a number of contactless schemes and infrastructures the densest in the world: Easycard, Visa Paywave, MasterCard Paypass, JCB J/speedy, MOS burger, Q-pay (7-ELEVEN), and more to come.

With very attractive prices (1st 30 minutes: Free, and every additional 15 minutes: NT$ 10 (USD 0.3 or EUR 0.25)), hopefully the “U-bike” initiative will make life in Taipei easier and healthier, and help the case for a fast and massive adoption NFC !

The largest taxi company in Taiwan, Taiwan-taxi 台灣大車隊 turns to Visa Paywave for the payment of taxi fares that usually range from the minimum fee of NT$70 (US$ 2 - EUR 1.6) to NT$400 (US$ 12.5 - EUR 9.5). The case for contactless payment in taxi seems indeed quite obvious: fares represent small amounts, taxi drivers often carry little change, people are often in a hurry, coins often drop and get lost, transactions have to be done off-line, etc. So much so that, 3 years ago, the same company did a trial with TSCC and their EasyCard. It was however not so successful because the amount stored on the Easycard is intended for much lower fares (TSCC fare is around NT$20), thus creating a situation where people would not have enough money on their Easycard to pay for the taxi fare and no possibility to top-up.

Visa Paywave solves this problem as the transaction is directly debited from the client’s account after the taxi driver does his daily settlement.

Although Visa Paywave is getting most publicity from this implementation with Taiwan Taxi, other brands can also be acquiered by the China Trust (CTCB) POS contactless reader: J/speedy (JCB), Easycard (TSCC) and Q-Pay (7-ELEVEN + CTCB)

One taxi driver said to me: “1 out of 5 customers pay with their Visa Paywave card! Very convenient”.

One more reason to push for a commercial rollout of NFC in Taiwan

The majority of readers are being distributed in the UK, followed by Italy and Turkey, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and Switzerland. 2009 will be the year of contactless payments, touted Ayliffe, estimating that the Visa payWave contactless cards numbers in Europe will increase from the current 500,000 to seven million by the end of the year. At the same time, Visa’s rival MasterCard has made similar plans in Europe. MasterCard has recently teamed up with global retailer Carrefour to launch the Pass MasterCard contactless card in February across France. The card uses the MasterCard PayPass contactless technology and comes with both credit card and debit card features. At the end of Q3 2008, there were almost 44 million MasterCard PayPass cards and devices in the world.” in the PAYPERS, January 27, 2009.

These are definitely good news for the future of NFC. In Europe, one of the main issues for massive adoption of contactless payment was the fact that the market is organized in such a way that merchants have to pay for their own POS terminals. With Visa and Mastercard investing in contactless reader deployment, one of the deadlocks is now gone. Still remains the case for a clear business model with banks and MNOs. As in the rest of the world. Still very good news, though.

NearFieldCommunicationsworld.com just posted an article about the fast growing of NFC forum, talked about all the new members joined NFC forum and the upgraded membership recently. And TORO is among the new comers, just between Sagem Mobiles and Toshiba. You can see the article here.

Semiconductor Energy Laboratory has joined as a Principal Member alongside a long list of new Associate Members including American Banknote, Arygon, Atrua Technologies, Austriamicrosystems, China Mobile, Collis, Comprion, Human Chain, Integri, ITN International, JSC People’s Bank of Georgia, Kyocera Wireless, LGAI Technological Center, Mobile Payment Systems, Polaric, Sagem Mobiles, Toro, Toshiba, Tranzfinity, Trusted Logic, TwinLinx, Velo Information Technology (Shanghai), Venyon, Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen (VDV), Visa Europe and Vocalink.