Why are cloud technologies useful for banks?

[Carding Forum]

Until now, the introduction of mobile payment services and wallets by banks was hampered by many factors: dependence on the developer of a secure element, the inability to implement solutions for several mobile operators at the same time, the inability to develop services based on NFC technology.

However, things have changed dramatically in recent months. The use of Host Card Emulation (HCE) cloud technology for payment card issuance and transaction processing gives banks some freedom to develop mobile payment solutions that are flexible and easy to configure. This is reported by Kaushik Roy, senior vice president of Sequent. Recall that Sequent is the developer of the HCE cloud technology used for mobile payments.

Through the use of cloud technology, Roy writes, banks can control the operation and purpose of mobile payments. As soon as new technologies appear, they become part of the general trend. The following factors affect the efficiency of the use of cloud technologies by banks:

• Host Card Emulation technology is supported by all Google smartphones of KitKat 4.4 version, as well as Blackberry. Windows phones will be joining them soon. For those devices that do not support HCE, a great alternative is to use QR codes, supported by the largest payment systems. Thus, banks can reach more users by providing them with cloud-enabled solutions.
• Cloud services have received support from card associations, including the largest of them, EMVco. At the same time, the use of digital tokens (one-time passwords) provides a high level of security and allows you to create a unified infrastructure for contact and contactless payments.
• Despite the rapid growth of NFC-enabled POS terminals, cloud technologies allow the use of QR codes or any other technology that establishes a connection between a user's phone and a terminal. This will allow banks to implement mobile payment services on all devices using existing technologies.

And finally, the Host Card Emulation technology will give banks the freedom to choose partners, parameters and devices while implementing the wide possibilities of new mobile payment solutions. Indeed, in fact, a large selection of key components allows you to conquer a larger number of end consumers.