Giesecke & Devrient and TORO Develop Innovative Offering for Mobile Financial Applications

Barcelona, Spain and Taipei, Taiwan – February 15, 2010. Toro Development Ldt. (TORO) and Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) are working together to develop a cutting-edge offering for mobile financial applications based on G&D’s Mobile Security Card and TORO’s Akami mobile platform. Both companies are contributing their respective expertise in hardware, firmware, middleware, mobile software, and system architecture to create a platform offering system integrators, financial service providers, and retailers fast time to market for a proven secure mobile solution. The solution will be on show in the G&D Pavilion (Avenue AV 103) at the Mobile World Congress from February 15 to 18, 2010, in Barcelona.

This new offering addresses the booming market of secure applications on mobile phones. It brings to the market a series of stand-alone solutions for secure applications that will not necessarily evolve toward near-field communication (NFC), such as mobile banking, mobile remittance and mobile ATM.

The Mobile Security Card originates from Giesecke & Devrient Secure Flash Solutions (G&D SFS), a joint venture between G&D and the flash controller supplier Phison Electronics. “G&D SFS offers secure micro-SD cards as one among a number of secure elements on the mobile phone. This is a strong sign to the financial industry that their applications can securely run on mobile. Independently from the longer-term agreements that banks and mobile network operators (MNOs) may be putting in place in preparation of NFC, banks can already educate their customers to use their mobile as a secure terminal for their daily banking operations”, says Laurent Renard, CEO of TORO.

“G&D and TORO complement each other in offering secure and convenient mobile financial applications. TORO is a company that understands the importance of both, security and the mobile user experience, and help get the best out of our products. They already make it easy, convenient, and very appealing to users to operate secure applications from mobile devices”, says Marcus Rosin, Managing Director of GD SFS.