NFC mobile payment with Citizen Digital Certificate

With the increasing availability of smart handsets, the mobile phone is likely to become the device of choice for accessing sophisticated services and applications in a convenient yet secure manner. This is especially true with the introduction of Near Field Communication (NFC), which provides the phone with an interface allowing it to act as a smart card reader or to emulate smart cards. However the user registration process is relatively weak for access to mobile communication services and some third party application providers have concerns when security certification is totally reliant on the trust and processes of the mobile network operator. In contrast, the Citizen Digital Certificate (CDC) is a PKI based citizen identification card issued to a user by the government, following a rigorous user registration process. In our investigation we explore the combined use of NFC phones and the CDC card, by using the government card to endorse the security of credentials held within the NFC Security Element that is hosted within the phone's Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). In this paper, we propose and describe a secure mobile payment system solution for use in a traditional in-store environment, which combines the CDC PKI, the NFC secure element within the SIM and a 3G mobile network. Moreover, the solution provides a convenient user experience, which leverages from the wide-scale 3G network and the short-range contactless communication of NFC, and could replace the use of payment or service specific smart cards.