The SD Association has a new ‘smart’ idea. New Micro SD cards, popular for use in Android smartphones and tablet devices, will soon be available. The new MicroSD cards will carry the NFC Secure Element which allows Near Field Communications smartphones communicate with a chip on the Micro SD card. These are mainly used in a digital wallet for electronic transactions known as m-commerce. The new SD Cards also support on-board applets for smartphones as well.
Many newer phones are shipping with NFC Radios mainly used with digital wallets. For security, Near Field Communication requires a special authentication method prior to encrypted communications. Now that can be be placed on a Micro SD in addition to additional memory for the smartphone or tablet. The card can also store small digital wallet applications for digital payments when combined with an NFC enabled phone or tablet. These are seen by consumers as a way to ditch plastic cards in favor of digital wallets, and you can also transfer the electronic wallet to different devices as you please.
Additionally the SDA supports Micro SD cards that have both the Secure Element security chip on board as well as a Near Field Communications Radio on the chip to give NFC capabilities to devices that don’t come with the technology. Changing devices seems even easier with these cards as they enable NFC on multiple devices as the user transfers the card. If the MicroSD card owner switches cellular carriers, the card can easily go from the old phone to a new one and the digital wallet user never skips a beat.
The SD Association claims that microSD cards account for 95% of all mobile memory card shipments and that 78% of all mobile phone shipments today have the microSD memory card slot. With the latest round of MicroSD cards with NFC radios and without, they hope new e-commerce and m-commerce applications are built to run on the memory cards. This greatly levels the playing field from vendor lock in as both cell phone carriers and device makers have their own aspirations toward digital payment systems.