Digital security company Gemalto has announced a partnership with Sony. The deal will drive Sonys FeliCa contactless payment technology globally, via Gemaltos UpTeq NFC SIM product lineup. 

Gemalto will expand its contactless offerings with Sonys FeliCa technology to complement its existing NFC portfolio. The FeliCa contactless technology is widely deployed in Asia for public transport, access management, event ticketing, customer loyalty shemes and micropayments.

“In a robust industry landscape where various contactless solutions are quickly converging, we believe that Gemalto is well positioned to deliver FeliCa technology – they are involved in more than 45 NFC projects globally, well ahead of their peers,” says Izumi Kawanishi, senior general manager of the FeliCa Business Division, at Sony. “Through this agreement, we aim to collaborate closely with Gemalto to develop globally compliant solutions for the growing NFC market.”

Tan Teck-Lee, chief innovation and technology officer and Asia president of Gemalto, says: “With FeliCas proven commercial adoption particularly in the Asian markets, we strongly believe that our agreement with Sony will enable Gemalto to build the foundation for significant expansion for both companies at a global scale. Gemaltos UpTeq NFC SIM is set to trigger the mass deployment of mobile NFC services now, while providing operators the flexibility to expand their offer in the longer term.”

Gemalto has also announced an end-to-end solution that it says allows reliable download and activation of mission-critical applications including M2M, NFC and streaming multimedia content over LTE networks. The solution, called Advanced Connectivity, combines Gemaltos Advanced Over-the-Air (OTA) platform and Advanced Universal Integrated Circuit Cards (UICC). It has been tested in an LTE environment with NTT Docomo in Japan, as well as with Metro PCS and Verizon Wireless in the US.