Two New Patent Awards Reinforce Identive Position in Secure Mobile Applications Market

Identive Group, Inc. has been granted two new patents that add to the company’s robust portfolio of near field communication (NFC) technology and reinforce its position in the growing market for secure mobile applications.

“Our R&D strategy is to develop and innovate ahead of market acceleration so we can participate in and shape new market opportunities as they emerge,” said Joseph Tassone, vice president technology and product management for Identive. “These two new patents are examples of the significant investments we are making in core NFC, cloud and security technologies that underlie early but growing trends around the use of mobile phones for secure applications such as banking, payment and identity management. We are committed to maintaining a high level of technology development that supports Identive’s goal to become the signature company in Secure ID. In April, we secured a funding agreement of up to $20 million over the next three years to support our R&D and new market growth efforts.”

“Around the world, the mobile phone is becoming the next frontier for electronic payments and our ‘tag on metal’ (tom) technology enables payment schemes to gain critical mass more quickly by enabling existing smartphones with NFC capability,” said Tassone.

U.S. Patent 8469281 is the fourth issued on Identive’s family of tom technology inventions, which utilize specialized magnetic shielding to allow radio frequency identification (RFID) and NFC tags to be used on metal devices or equipment, which normally interfere with RFID signal performance. When affixed to the back of a smartphone, the tom-based tags provide NFC communication capabilities that enable the phone to be used for secure mobile applications, including payment. Currently banks, mobile network operators and other companies in Europe, Africa, Asia and the U.S. are using Identive’s tom technology to enable phone-based payment programs.

“Our ground-breaking invention for mobile authentication enables NFC smartphones to provide two-factor authentication (2FA) when accessing secure corporate and cloud systems. This provides a high level of security while making it extremely easy for users to verify their identities to online banking networks or corporate web resources. Our technology combines NFC with URL protocols and OATH industry authentication standards to provide a seamless ‘tap to login’ experience for users. We eliminate the need to read and re-type a one-time password or even type in the online banking or corporate web address. In addition, there is no need to install software on the phone, making this technology a perfect fit for the global one-time password 2FA market,” concluded Tassone.

Identive’s mobile 2FA technology can be embedded within ID cards, banking cards or tokens that, when tapped, cause a unique one-time password (OTP) to be generated that is then presented directly to the secure website or network to authenticate the user.