CellTrust Corporation, a provider of SecureSMS for mobile phones, has announced that it is preparing patent-pending, NFC-provisioning APIs using SecureSMS, in preparation for the NFC technology rollout beginning in early 2011.

NFC (Near Field Communication), a short-range wireless communication standard, bundles a contactless chip with a contactless reader inside the mobile device.

Using the NFC technology, consumers just need to either wave or tap their phone within a few inches of a reader to transfer information to their mobile phone or to complete a mobile payment or transaction.

The NFC technology aims at making life easier for the end-user, however preparing the NFC network will require the carrier to send sensitive and confidential information to the mobile subscriber's handset. 

The control channel which has high resiliency, and low bandwidth requirements, was designed for carriers to send specific commands and instructions to the handset via SMS regardless of the fact that standard SMS is not secure and can be spoofed. Provisioning NFC with CellTrust's (News - Alert) SecureSMS APIs addresses spoofing along with a fully authenticated, government-grade, highly encrypted, tamper-proof process, will also allow message sizes up to 5,000 characters.

Howard Wilcox, senior analyst, Juniper Research (News - Alert), said that they believe 1 in 6 subscribers globally will have NFC phones by 2014 as NFC phones offer ease of use and convenience. He added that CellTrust’s announcement was an important development to put a user’s security concerns at rest while enabling the rollout of NFC enabled mobile wallets.

CellTrust's SecureSMS NFC APIs utilizes the Short Message Service Center (SMSC) allowing carriers to use their existing investment in SMS infrastructure and in provisioning NFC. Carriers can simply integrate with the SecureSMS APIs and send secure commands and instructions to the handset to provision NFC for any kind of of transaction, including adding and deleting credit cards.

In addition, SecureSMS offers mobile network operators additional security for OTA (Over-The-Air) configuration and provisioning of mobile devices.

Sean Moshir (News - Alert), chairman, and CEO of CellTrust, said that the NFC solution makes it easy for carriers and banks to implement and integrate NFC.