Applications

Secure MCUs

Financial applications

The losses of the counterfeit magnetic cards and fraudulent use of those cards came to tens of billions of yen per year now.
Financial applications are set to be the largest Smart Card growth segment over the next ten years. The implementation of recognised silicon adds valuable functionality and enhanced security over standard card plastic.
Unrivalled silicon expertise is key in providing customers with technologically sound and competitive products, thus maintaining and retaining good customer relationships and providing confidence at the point of transaction. A wide range of silicon products are available from the smaller EEPROM products (single/dual application) to the more sophisticated 288KB products (multi application). Coprocessors are available for the more secure cryptographic RSA functions. In addition to mainstream single/dual application, we remain focussed on providing silicon for both Global Platform and MULTOS business.

Expectations for multi-application products and M commerce products have increased, we work for developing our technology with figuring out the trend and the demand of the banking market.

The right OS for banking?

Renesas Electronics is a member of:

JavaCard Forum for Java
Global platform for Visa
MULTOS
Renesas Electronics also works closely with card manufacturers and their proprietary OS.

In-house banking Expertise

We believe that our in-depth knowledge of financial requirements, and an understanding of market trends are crucial in enabling our customers to stay focused on their core businesses. Renesas Electronics has supported the successful introduction of the Geldkarte, Germany's e-purse scheme with more than 50 Million cards issued today and Renesas Electronics's microcontrollers have received ZKA approval. We promote the development of secure microcontroller which enables to improve the convenience of the multi-application card with EMV specification, such as integration of traffic ticket and prepaid use.

Transport

Contactless interface cards have spread to the transportation field though the implementations of electronic ticketing systems. Ticket holders can now seamlessly pass through the ticket barriers without delay by simply holding the contactless ticket close to the reader/writer. This method is often reported as having fewer problems and lower maintenance costs than conventional systems.

The ETC system, which make car drivers holding the ETC (IC) card in their vehicle equipment pass through the tollgate without stopping, is expected to improve the convenience of cashless clearing (credit clearing) or easing congestion.

What Renesas Electronics can provide

Renesas Electronics offers a growing range of contactless I/F smart microcomputers with enhanced security technology for Dual Interface cards.

Situation

The use of contactless cards is becoming commonplace in many regions mainly in Asia. They are used daily in countries such as Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. It is thought that this technology will be spread globally due to the fact that this technology it is more convenient and has faster throughput than traditional ticketing systems.

Mobile telecommunication

Since the beginning of the Digital Mobile Communication era, Smart Cards have played an important role in insuring secure network access.

GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world, Europe, North America and Asia (except Japan) and the Smart Card used in GSM mobile phones is SIM (Subscriber Identification Modules) cards. Private data such as phone numbers and phone books is registered in the SIM cards and when a user buy a new mobile handset, the previous his/her phone number can be used on the new handset only with inserting his/her SIM card into the new mobile handset. Therefore, a user can select a mobile handset without any restrictions.

It has been promoted the research and development of the SIM card adopting the standard Smart Card OS such as Java card and the SIM application development kit shortening the development of many types of value-added services using the SIM card. The SIM card has become key existence to improve the features and services of a mobile phone.

The Future of SIM card - UIM card

Except the GSM standard which has been the most popular in the world, the W-CDMA standard in Japan and the CDMA standard mainly in USA have started new services. The UIM (User Identity Module) card is a Smart card for these new standards that is upward compatible with the GSM SIM card.

The UIM card can provide international roaming service within different RF standard service area although the SIM card can be used only within GSM standard service area. The same phone number can be used on the handsets of different stardards only with inserting the UIM card.

Subscriber information is registered in the UIM card as well as in the SIM and the UIM card presents a user with a choice of a mobile handset. The UIM can load credit function to make it possible to provide mobile transaction (E-money) service and register private information of a user to make it possible to become an ID card.

The use application of a mobile phone has been expanded infinitely such as Stock/Sport information, Weather forecast, Traffic information, Game, E-commerce, digital signature and reservation of trip or concert.

What Renesas can provide

From the early days of the SIM era, Renesas Electronics has been supporting the evolving requirements for ever-growing EEPROM integration, with its original MONOS (Metal Oxide Nitride Oxide Silicon) EEPROM technology.

With new services emerging, new requirements appear that we will serve with the unique experience that we gained through the past years. Continuous investments in security, associated with public-key cryptographic engine will meet the forthcoming mobile commerce requirements.

To address the large memory integration and to support the integrated languages performance requirement, we have capitalised on 32 bit CPU core which is upward compatible with our field-proven 8-bit and 16-bit CPU cores. Seamless software migration will therefore be offered through upward compatibility with our 8-bit and 16-bit CPUs and through the newest high performance 32-bit CPU.

Public Sector

Citizen smart cards are innovated in governments recently, because of its enhanced security, and will be widely spread in the near future.

Using the smart cards make easier to authenticate the identical person, and simplify various procedures such as issuing residence certificate or registering at a new address.
This system provides better public service, and nationalizes or streamlines the office procedure at local governments.

Some countries have already taken over this system in their public services. Japanese government take in contactless smart card, and Taiwan government take in contact smart card.

Changing over to the smart cards from ordinary health insurance cards, it is expected that patients will receive more improved services, such as simplifying the paper works for issuing patient registration card, searching medical record or accelerating accounting procedure.
Furthermore, this smart card helps for managing patient's healthcare, since this smart card is able to store their data such as clinical history or inspection result, and sharing the data with healthcare facilities streamlines their treatments.

Digital ID

The use of employee cards/student cards for personal authentication is increasing. These ID cards are used are generally used for access to buildings and payment for food in cafeterias. It is also possible to further increase the level of security by setting the level of access and recording movement history. The addition of prepaid functions, allows these cards to be used to pay for food and in vending machines, allowing for speedy cashless transactions.

Security Applications

Our products are already used in many TV set top boxes. This is an indication of the effective, secure smartcard solutions offered to customers by Renesas in this field. Smartcards featuring high-level technology are an ideal platform for storing information about the holder. Such developments in the storage of essential personal data are anticipated for various uses such as ID cards, hospital/clinic patient cards and for mass-commerce.

Security Applications and Renesas Electronics

Use of the Internet for E-Commerce has increased exponentially of late. A high level of security for smartcard makes online shopping possible, especially when it comes to guarding against loss of personal data and prevention of illegal access.

Smartcards not only store personal data, they also provide the core of security systems for the Pay-TV industry.

Multi Applications

Until now most Smart Cards have implemented a proprietary Operating System (OS) and carry a single application per card. Hence consumers have had to carry separate cards in their wallets for each application e.g. telephone cards, several banking & credit cards, loyalty cards, access & ID cards, etc. This is perceived as being inconvenient by many consumers who would like to find a way reduce the amount of plastic in their wallets.

Applications, e.g. GSM SIM, are traditionally written to run on a specific Card platform, comprising the combination of chip & OS. If the provider wants to move an application from one platform to another, the application typically has to be rewritten to run on the new platform.

A multi-application operating system provides a platform that allows a number of different applications to reside on a single Smart Card. For example, applications such as EMV, purse, PKI ID and loyalty schemes could reside on one Smart Card, permitting cardholders to carry one card rather than three separate cards. This provides a significant convenience for the consumer while allowing card Issuers the opportunity to share the space on their cards with other applications, thereby spreading the cost of card issuance.

The 2 main types of multi application operating systems are Global Platform (GP) and Multos. They add the additional advantage of interoperability between manufacturers, developers and issuers within these platforms. This avoids the customer/issuer getting "locked" into a specific vendor/developer, allowing multi sourcing of components, in turn reducing risk and increasing flexibility of the solution.

It also greatly simplifies the upgrade path of the end solution, for instance if the OS/silicon upgrade to the latest technology, there is no impact to the applications running on that platform. This means there is no need for costly new security evaluation, key ceremonies or modification to the application, thus future proofing the product.

A third advantage is the fact that because a standard Application Programming Interface (API) is used there are many 3rd party software developers able to develop applications on the Java or Multos based (compiled from C/C++ language). There are also many standard applications already on the market for applications from purse to PKI and EMV to loyalty. Applications are portable between one implementation and another, further increasing flexibility to the end solution.

MULTOS and Java Card are the two leading multi-application software products that are enabling a number of applications to reside on a single Smart Card.

Renesas Electronics leads the industry in providing Smart Card microchips that incorporate implementations of the MULTOS and Java Card specifications. Our Smart Card microchips meet the requirements of MULTOS and Java Card by providing enhanced security, memory capacity, processor power and cryptographic capability.