NFC

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QR, AFCS and NFC - An exciting Ménage à Trois

Ingo Noka
Technology, Design, Idea

The large-scale rollout of NFC terminals in the wake of QR acceptance, paired with the ubiquitous cross-border acceptance of EMV payment cards and the eminent suitability of contactless EMV for mass transit account-based ticketing, has put QR payment systems on the backfoot.

Just when we thought traditional payment cards have lost the race, they are rapidly eating into the QR payment lead.

The solutions are clear to me. QR payment systems must come together and build a cross-border system that deserves its name, and they have to transition to the NFC interface of the mobile phones[1] for mutual authentication.

One might ask why bother with some NFC-QR contraption when we already have EMV, which is proven and works globally. My answer would be that it would indeed be a waste of time if NFC-QR simply mimics the EMV-based payment schemes.

But if the QR payment providers remember that there is more to QR payment than just the mobile phone camera and a checkerboard of ones and zeros, NFC-QR can be more than an imitation of EMV.

In fact, when you add authentication and mutual data exchange at the point of interaction, you will find that many things are possible that would require cost-prohibitive changes to traditional payment schemes.

One such option would be a sender-centric QR-NFC system. In my article I am outlining such a system using the example of account-based automated fare collection.

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My Dream Team Philippine AFCS

Ingo Noka
Technology, Philippines

Sports fans sometimes assemble their own virtual dream teams. The teams have nothing to do with reality other than the names of the players. The dream team will never play together, but apparently fans have some fun with it.

Team sports do not interest me. However, I have spent hours watching YouTube videos of people repairing an Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). In my defense, this AGC actually went to the moon and back!

It is therefore not entirely out of character that I thought it would be fun to assemble my dream team Philippines AFCS, and I hope you won’t find this any stranger than a "football dream team".

My article has become rather long, even so I have still only scratched the surface. In case you do not want to read the whole thing, these are the main principles of my ideal AFCS:

  • Full transparency and openness. All specifications are in the public domain.

  • The rules are designed explicitly to allow anybody to join the system, from the smallest provider somewhere in the provinces to the biggest operator.

  • Interoperability is based on ubiquitous acceptance of transit cards and optional support for QR tickets and general purpose payment cards.

  • Cost is driven by competition, not by government regulation. The only function in the system that requires a contract with the scheme provider (government) is the central clearing and settlement system.