ACS Talks About NFC and Mobile Commerce in Cards Asia 2013

May 20, 2013

HONG KONG, 20 May, 2013 - Advanced Card Systems Ltd. (ACS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Advanced Card Systems Holdings Ltd., SEHK: 8210), Asia Pacific's top supplier and one of the world's top 3 suppliers of PC-linked smart card readers (Source: Frost & Sullivan), delivered talks for Cards Asia 2013, which was held from 24 to 25 Apr in Singapore. Talks covered opportunities in near field communication (NFC) technology, and trends in mobile commerce (m-commerce). Speaking on behalf of ACS were Mr. Gilbert Leung, Vice President for Sales and Marketing, and Mr. Gordon Lee, Regional Sales Manager.

Gilbert delivered a talk entitled, “NFC: Just a Payment Tool?” positing that although payment is the top-of-mind application whenever NFC is mentioned, there are other successful NFC applications outside of payment. While payment is no doubt a killer NFC application, other successful applications include the dissemination of digital content (whether promotional, e.g. discount coupons, or purely informational, e.g. city maps) to Felica mobile phones in Japan, using ACS’s ACR1222U-J4 Felica Web-to Reader. Gilbert added that NFC may also be used for physical and logical access control.

Meanwhile, in his talk entitled, “Future Trends of m-Commerce,” Gordon noted that more advanced mobile phones present new opportunities for merchants. For example, they can turn mobile devices into point-of-sale (POS) terminals to cut down hardware investment costs. Instead of spending on a full-sized POS terminal, merchants can use mobile devices in conjunction with portable card readers that still enable a full range of payment capabilities.

Gordon also enumerated factors influencing the use of mobile devices as POS terminals: hardware, operating systems (OS) and security. Merchants must consider, for example, whether the card readers they will use in conjunction with mobile devices can support the cards used by their market. He presented as examples ACS’s readers, which provide a match for each card type: the ACR31 can read magnetic stripe bank cards, the ACR38U can read EMV chip cards, and the ACR122T can read EMV contactless cards. All three readers are small enough to be used with current sleek, compact mobile devices.

Gordon also said that app developers must consider whether the mobile payment apps they create would work seamlessly with major OS, while card reader developers must consider whether their drivers and libraries enable stable interface with relevant card types. Finally, manufacturers and developers must think about compliance to major payment certifications, to guarantee the security of using mobile devices as POS terminals.

To get more NFC and smart card technology information and explore existing NFC and mobile solutions, interested users may email [email protected].

About ACS

Advanced Card Systems Ltd. (ACS, wholly owned subsidiary of Advanced Card Systems Holdings Ltd., SEHK: 8210), founded in 1995, is Asia Pacific's top supplier and one of the world's top 3 suppliers of PC-linked smart card readers, as well as the winner of the Product Quality Leadership Award for Smart Card Readers from Frost & Sullivan. One of the companies on Forbes Asia's 2010 “Best Under a Billion" list, a prestigious list of 200 top-performing companies with sales between US$5 million and US$1 billion, selected from 12,930 publicly listed enterprises in Asia Pacific, ACS develops a wide range of high quality smart card reading/writing devices, smart cards and related products and distributes them to over 100 countries worldwide. Visit ACS at https://www.acs.com.hk/.