Infineon ups the ante in smart card innovation – Technologist

Infineon Technologies sets a new milestone in smart card innovation with 40nm generation of security chip solutions. The SLC3x has outstanding performance and scalability for a vast array of smart card applications and beyond.

Smart card manufacturers and payment solution providers will benefit from a family architecture based on the de-facto industry standard ARM, contactless excellence from Infineon as well as innovative logistic concepts.

Smart card solutions for payment, identification and other applications are increasingly transitioning to contactless, multifunctional technologies. They often also incorporate new biometric features for user identification. However, making a more convenient user experience with these new features and capabilities involve multiple stakeholders, adding implementation complexity and security challenges to the designs. As market leader in security solutions, Infineon enables its customers to better address these challenges and to better respond to new market trends.

Delivering payment solutions in new form factors

Infineon’s SLC3x series of security controllers support the full application spectrum, from low-cost contact-based pre-paid and loyalty cards through standard dual-interface payment and identity cards to biometric system-on-card solutions and wearable devices – all compliant with the latest EMVCo specifications.

Transaction speed and robust packaging are key success factors for contactless applications such as identification and transport ticketing, delivered through form factors such as wearables like key fobs and rings or through cards with biometric user authentication.

With the SLC3x product family, Infineon said it enables contactless payment transaction times below 200 milliseconds even in scenarios with low reader field strengths or in combination with small antenna designs. In addition, highly robust and easy-to-integrate contactless or dual-interface packages such as Coil on Module support fast transition from contact-based to dual-interface solutions, while the performance and reliability of the final product is further improved.

Innovative ready-to-use delivery forms such as small SPA modules with integrated ISO- and EMV-compliant antenna enable designers to deliver payment solutions in new form factors while reducing production timelines to a few weeks. The new platform also offers innovative logistic concepts to further shorten time-to-market.

SLC3x products are based on a high-performance, powerful and energy-efficient 32-bit ARM SecurCore SC300 dual-interface security cryptocontroller. This is enhanced by Infineon’s digital security technology as well as third-generation SOLID FLASH technology. Infineon said that combining these technologies with full coverage of contactless protocols, makes this family unique in the market.