Texas Instruments has announced plans to deliver ISO/IEC 14443-compliant RFID chips designed to meet the stringent security requirements for Mastercard International's PayPass line of RFID payment cards and tokens. TI expects to submit this product for Mastercard certification in the second quarter of 2005, with full production planned to start in the second half of this year.

TI's new 13.56 MHz RFID chip is the latest to be introduced in a series of solutions based on the company's ISO/IEC 14443 technology platform. This platform features products with universally accepted and standardized cryptography, using National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-approved crypto algorithms, including Triple DES and SHA-1.

The ISO/IEC 14443 standard allows for this increased level of security because it supports significantly faster rates of data exchange (up to 848 kbps), enabling more complex security information to be passed between an RFID card and reader without affecting the user's experience. As an added feature, read ranges for products based on the ISO/IEC 14443 platform are also limited to 4 cm (roughly 1.5 inches), further increasing the security of the transaction.

"The financial services industry recognizes that ISO/IEC 14443-based RFID solutions provide the stringent levels of security required for conducting payment transactions," said Shawn Rogers, director, wireless commerce and Tag-it products, Texas Instruments RFid Systems. "With our heritage in pioneering technologies in new markets, we're working with leading bank card issuers and credit card companies to bring these highly reliable and secure RFID solutions to this market."

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