Factors Influencing the Slow Rate of Penetration of NFC Mobile Payment in Western Europe

The NFC technology implemented on the base of contemporary mobile handsets can provide considerable benefits to end-users. However, despite high level of diffusion of mobile phones in Western Europe, the level of penetration of the NFC based mobile payment is low. A considerable number of trials have been initiated, however, large scale deployment of commercial NFC services cannot be seen. This paper identifies and analyzes different factors that influence the slow rate of penetration of NFC based mobile payment in Western Europe. This paper presents a qualitative study based on experience of six NFC pilots implemented in Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK. The research findings confirm that a number of demand and supply barriers negatively affect the rate of the penetration of the NFC payment. The network externalities and the lack of consumer awareness about NFC services were identified as the most important demand side barriers. The most significant supply side barriers are the lack of uniform technological standards, the lack of NFC enabled mobile phones, and the coopetition issue. In addition, the interrelation between mentioned obstacles was identified. This fact means that a delay in the NFC payment’s diffusion is affected not by a single factor, but rather by a set of interrelated factors. The sources of these obstacles are related to the consumer acceptance, the specifics of business environment, and the technology

Stakeholders' roles for Business Modelling in a City Logistics ecosystem: towards a conceptual model

A major challenge associated with the implementation of CL initiatives lies with their economic and financial long-term success. In this context, the business model concept can support assessing the business side of stakeholders' decision-making processes as major determinants for such success. The purpose of this work is to overcome the shortcomings of the business model approach applied to CL systems. To this end, a conceptual model is built from a role-based business ecosystem modelling approach to provide a business model representation of the CL business ecosystem, able to identify and explore the components of the system and their dynamics

A tokenization-based communication architecture for HCE-Enabled NFC services

Following the announcement of Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology, card emulation mode based Near Field Communication (NFC) services have gained further appreciation as an enabler of the Cloud-based Secure Element (SE) concept. A comprehensive and complete architecture with a centralized and feasible business model for diverse HCE-based NFC services will be highly appreciated, particularly by Service Providers and users. To satisfy the need in this new emerging research area, a Tokenization-based communication architecture for HCE-based NFC services is presented in this paper. Our architecture proposes Two-Phased Tokenization to enable the identity management of both user and Service Provider. NFC Smartphone users can store, manage, and make use of their sensitive data on the Cloud for NFC services; Service Providers can also provide diverse card emulation NFC services easily through the proposed architecture. In this paper, we initially present the Two-Phased Tokenization model and then validate the proposed architecture by providing a case study on access control. We further evaluate the usability aspect in terms of an authentication scheme. We then discuss the ecosystem and business model comprised of the proposed architecture and emphasize the contributions to ecosystem actors. Finally, suggestions are provided for data protection in transit and at rest.This work is funded by KocSistem Information and Communication Services Inc. and Turkish Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology under SAN-TEZ Project no. 0726.STZ.2014Publisher's Versio

The survey on Near Field Communication

PubMed ID: 26057043Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging short-range wireless communication technology that offers great and varied promise in services such as payment, ticketing, gaming, crowd sourcing, voting, navigation, and many others. NFC technology enables the integration of services from a wide range of applications into one single smartphone. NFC technology has emerged recently, and consequently not much academic data are available yet, although the number of academic research studies carried out in the past two years has already surpassed the total number of the prior works combined. This paper presents the concept of NFC technology in a holistic approach from different perspectives, including hardware improvement and optimization, communication essentials and standards, applications, secure elements, privacy and security, usability analysis, and ecosystem and business issues. Further research opportunities in terms of the academic and business points of view are also explored and discussed at the end of each section. This comprehensive survey will be a valuable guide for researchers and academicians, as well as for business in the NFC technology and ecosystem.Publisher's Versio

Modelo de seguridad para garantizar la integridad de los pagos móviles basados en Near Field Communication (NFC).

Se propuso un modelo de seguridad para garantizar la integridad de los pagos móviles basados en Near Field Communication (NFC) denominado NRioSec, que establece tres niveles de protección con un alto grado de compatibilidad y fácil integración en el desarrollo de aplicaciones de pago móviles. Sus componentes permiten controlar la autenticación con certificados digitales, la unicidad de transacciones mediante la tokenización y el cifrado de datos mediante algoritmos robustos, y que sumados a las normas de seguridad de aceptación de pagos móviles del PCI SSC, determinan la eficacia de su aplicación para mitigar las vulnerabilidades analizadas. Se comprobó que el modelo de seguridad NRioSec incrementa el nivel de integridad de los pagos móviles basados en NFC porque mediante cifrado protege la información sensible que se transmite durante una transacción; al ser transmitida la información únicamente entre el emisor y el receptor se protege la información confidencial de los atacantes o de las entidades participantes, pues éstas no tienen necesidad de acceder a dicha información; el modelo proporciona cifrado y autenticación de origen para que el receptor los pueda validar y, se asegura al receptor que los detalles del pago son correctos y corresponden a los datos proporcionados por el emisor mediante una pantalla donde se confirme que los datos son correctos.A security model was proposed to guarantee the integrity of mobile payments based on Near Field Communication (NFC) called NRioSec, which establishes three levels of protection with a high degree of compatibility and easy integration in the development of mobile payment applications. Its components allow controlling authentication with digital certificates, the uniqueness of transactions through tokenization and data encryption using robust algorithms, and that added to the PCISSC mobile payment acceptance security standards, determine the efficiency of its application to mitigate the vulnerabilities analyzed it was possible to verify that the NRioSec security model increases the integrity level of mobile payments based on NFC because encryption protects the sensitive information transmitted during a transaction; When the information is transmitted only between the sender and the receiver, the confidential information of the attackers or participating entities is protected. Because they have no need to access said information; the model provides encryption and authentication of origin so that the receiver can validate them, and the receiver is assured that the details of the payment are correct and correspond to the data provided by the issuer through a screen where the data is confirmed to be correct

Managing near field communication (NFC) payment applications through cloud computing

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is a short-range radio communication channel which enables users to exchange data between devices. NFC provides a contactless technology for data transmission between smart phones, Personal Computers (PCs), Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and such devices. It enables the mobile phone to act as identification and a credit card for customers. However, the NFC chip can act as a reader as well as a card, and also be used to design symmetric protocols. Having several parties involved in NFC ecosystem and not having a common standard affects the security of this technology where all the parties are claiming to have access to client’s information (e.g. bank account details). The dynamic relationships of the parties in an NFC transaction process make them partners in a way that sometimes they share their access permissions on the applications that are running in the service environment. These parties can only access their part of involvement as they are not fully aware of each other’s rights and access permissions. The lack of knowledge between involved parties makes the management and ownership of the NFC ecosystem very puzzling. To solve this issue, a security module that is called Secure Element (SE) is designed to be the base of the security for NFC. However, there are still some security issues with SE personalization, management, ownership and architecture that can be exploitable by attackers and delay the adaption of NFC payment technology. Reorganizing and describing what is required for the success of this technology have motivated us to extend the current NFC ecosystem models to accelerate the development of this business area. One of the technologies that can be used to ensure secure NFC transactions is cloud computing which offers wide range advantages compared to the use of SE as a single entity in an NFC enabled mobile phone. We believe cloud computing can solve many issues in regards to NFC application management. Therefore, in the first contribution of part of this thesis we propose a new payment model called “NFC Cloud Wallet". This model demonstrates a reliable structure of an NFC ecosystem which satisfies the requirements of an NFC payment during the development process in a systematic, manageable, and effective way

A new evaluation approach to City Logistics projects A business-oriented Agent-Based model

Supplying goods to urban areas is a fundamental economic process because the majority of the world population lives and buys goods in cities. Freight distribu-tion activities in urban areas account for roughly 40% of supply chain costs and 60% of supply chain CO2 emissions. Moreover, surging e-commerce trends shape the urban freight transportation arena, increasing its complexity and the pressure on private actors. Thus, urban freight transportation activities generate negative externalities, but are relevant to a great amount of enterprises that compose the economic and social fabric. In this context, City Logistics (CL) emerged as a comprehensive concept driv-ing solutions to reduce negative externalities while interfering as little as possible with private actors’ operations and profitability. CL scholars and practitioners are facing several issues arising from e-commerce and population growth. In particu-lar, logistics service providers are called to optimize their operations in order to increase the speed of delivery. At the same time however, CL is dealing with technological and systemic innovation that might enhance optimization capabili-ties and network usage. As a response to the changing environment and within the mandate of CL paradigm, local authorities and private actors have invested on a wide range of initiatives. The variety of approaches adopted and stakeholders involved, at multiple governmental levels, are responsible for a mixed landscape of CL experiences across different regional contexts. Furthermore, despite their relatively large dif-fusion, CL initiatives often fail in taking up after a first pilot implementation, unable to reach paying customers after public subsidies are removed. Therefore, un-derstanding the major business aspects that underline the reasons for adopting CL initiative by private stakeholders is key to a more long-term vision on CL implementation and assessment. Previous research has given little attention to understanding the commercial and business aspects of CL projects before actually designing and implementing them, even though CL scholars have ascertained that evaluation methodologies need to encompass all aspects relevant issues for CL schemes. Several methodol-ogies have been proposed since the inception of CL with the evaluation objective in mind. However, they fall short in different ways. For instance, qualitative methods adopt a short-term feasibility approach to CL evaluation, and the subjec-tive evaluation of quantitative outcomes may potentially influence the ranking between different alternatives. On the other hand, modelling techniques need high quality data to simulate traffic flows and consumers’ demand, but fail short to ad-dress other important decision-making factors related to the business model of stakeholders. Research opportunities therefore lie in mixing the advantages of quantitative and qualitative approaches to include stakeholders in quantitative ex-ante evaluation of CL projects. My thesis will try to answer to the following research questions. -Research question 1: What is the state-of-art of CL projects modelling and evaluation meth-ods/frameworks? -Research question 2: How can an integrated qualitative-quantitative framework for CL evaluation be conceived? -Research question 3: How can a new evaluation framework effectively integrate a business-oriented view of CL systems? The first objective of this thesis is to highlight advantages and disadvantages of assessment methodologies with respect to the integration of the business mo-tives of CL actors into non-project specific, a long-term view on CL project as-sessment. The second objective of this work is to define a theoretical framework for designing and assessing CL projects business models on a qualitative level. To this end, CL systems are here compared to business ecosystems, which are a network of interrelated business entities. In the framework, CL actors can play multi-ple roles, and their decisions are based on their objectives, information, and con-straints. The business model of a business entity within the system is the set of the roles it plays, the business and operative relationships formed with other business entities, and the monetary and intangible values exchanged through these relationships. New quantitative methods are needed for a more sound representation of the patterns emerging from the different behaviours of agents. Hence, the third objective is to build an agent-model proposal for modelling, simulating and ultimately evaluating CL projects business model. In agent-based modelling, each actor can be modelled as an agent possessing objectives and decision-making attributes. Agents act autonomously and their interactions are defined formally by means of ontologies and model narratives built as a representation of real-life system. Finally, an experiment design will be constructed to provide insights on an ex-isting case study related to the introduction of automated parcel locker station. Two CL ecosystem configurations are modelled together in order to simulate the decision to adopt a new logistics service by potential customers. Then, the effect of the decision regarding the allocation of marketing and R&D budget is also evaluated. From the simulation runs, it becomes clear that the outcome for each ecosystem configuration in terms of profits and customers is strongly influenced by the decisions taken within the other configuration. In summary, this thesis provides a first modelling and simulation tool for as-sessing the implications of business model decisions within specific CL business ecosystems. For instance, the strategic decision to adopt a service proposed by a CL company is associated with the evaluation of intangible benefits offered by such company. Moreover, the modelling tool highlights the links between such strategic decisions and the operative ones, such as vehicle routing or inventory policies. Therefore, it proves that qualitative approaches can be used to integrate all stakeholders, while quantitative modelling provide a simulation environment to test long-term effects of different scenarios. However, this study has some limita-tions. For instance, more strategic decisions should be included in the model to investigate endogeneity stemming from agents’ actions. Furthermore, the implica-tion on the business ecosystem of the value of information are not assessed. Finally, the scope of the computational experiment should be widened to include a per-formance evaluation phase, which would then lead to more decision-making by the agents. Further research is aimed at using the tools developed in the thesis to understand how to drive retailers to change their attitude towards CL by under-standing and designing value proposition that might appeal to them. Moreover, the implications of the entrance of new CL players one traditional ones’ business model need to be explored more deeply from the strategic perspective of power relations

Investigation of the NFC technology for mobile payments and the development of a prototype payment application in the context of marginalized rural areas

Both communication, and the methods and tools of commerce have evolved over time through the invention of new technologies. The latest of these technologies are mobile devices and electronic commerce respectively. The combination of these two technologies has resulted in the creation of electronic commerce which also enables mobile payments. Mobile payments (mpayments) are enabled by many technologies with Near Field Communication (NFC) being the most recent one. NFC is a wireless technology that enables mobile devices in close proximity to exchange data. The mobile device has already been enthusiastically accepted by the customers and they carry it with them wherever they go and this makes it a good device for providing a payment method alternative. This research looks at contactless mobile payment as a payment method. Customers in marginalized rural areas lack a payment alternative to cash hence in this research we are investigating and proposing the use of a NFC enabled mobile payment application for Marginalized Rural Areas. This research extensively evaluates and assesses the potential of using NFC enabled m-payments in Marginalized Rural Areas in South Africa by carrying out an investigation of the technology and its acceptance by customers. The investigation of the technology included implementation of a prototype application which was used to introduce the technology to the consumers. The customer acceptance of the NFC enabled mobile payments was evaluated using the Technology Acceptance model (TAM). The model was modified to suit the context of this study by adding more constructs. This research concluded that Near Field Communication enabled m-payments have great potential to be used and accepted by people in the marginalized rural areas