Seven leading players in the Near Field Communication (NFC) ecosystem, today joined forces to form the MIFARE4Mobile? Industry Group.

Ericsson, Gemalto, NXP, Oberthur Technologies, STMicroelectronics, Venyon, a company in the Giesecke&Devrient group, and ViVOtech will work together to standardize and advance the uniform management of MIFARE applications on NFC-enabled secure elements, such as SIM cards, and mobile phones.

MIFARE has become a widely adopted contactless technology and is an essential element in public transportation schemes, ticketing systems and access management around the world. MIFARE4Mobile is a technology, which has been developed by NXP and is used to manage MIFARE-based services in NFC mobile devices, from the over-the-air installation to the end-user interaction via the user interface of the mobile phone. By bringing together some of the key players in the NFC ecosystem, the group will act as a platform to provide future direction, discuss experiences and share best practices to ensure evolution, interoperable development and implementation of the MIFARE4Mobile technology.

Over the next few months, the MIFARE4Mobile industry group will further develop the specifications supporting MIFARE DESFire technology and multiple Trusted Service Managers, following the initial MIFARE4Mobile release from late 2008 supporting MIFARE Classic technology. Licenses for the MIFARE4Mobile Interface specifications are free of charge.

The current version of the MIFARE4Mobile interfaces specifications, released by NXP, is available under http://www.mifare.net/products/mifare4mobile/ and has been licensed more than 200 times by industry players around the world.