INSIDE and FIME plan to offer their customers greater visibility into the testing and certification requirements at an early stage of development of their NFC mobile handset products, and provide them with products, tools and services to ensure compliance. The partnership also intends to consult with various standards bodies, including the NFC Forum and payment and transport associations to boost or amend current certification standards.

“By developing this comprehensive test and certification process, our customers will be able to avoid the kinds of early market problems that plagued other technologies by ensuring interoperability of NFC devices from day one,” said INSIDE’s Philippe Martineau, executive vice president of the NFC Business line.

NFC devices not only have to comply with the NFC Forum’s requirements and include the minimum interoperability level, but also with ETSI standards for HCI and SWP protocols. In addition, they need to be able to cohabitate with traditional NFC applications, as well as a large range of legacy applications and infrastructure combining payment, transport, access control, loyalty and other applications.

On top of all those requirements, there is also the issue of connecting to the SIM card or other secure element. As a result, the complex relationship between the NFC chip and the handset application framework requires a new dimension in testing to ensure an optimal interoperability level for contactless applications.