Trustonic first to land EMVCo Software-Based Mobile Payments certificate

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
10th February 2020

Trustonic has become the first fintech to land EMVCo’s certificate for Software-Based Mobile Payments (SBMP).

This means Trustonic’s trusted execution environment (TEE) solution – called Trustonic Application Protection (TAP) – is the first solution to allow developers to create mobile payments apps which have the same certified and trusted levels of security as the apps developed by payment monopoly players such as WeChat and AliPay.

“We’re democratising access to the TEE,” Trustonic’s product director Leo Machado tells FinTech Futures. “[Our solution] brings the capability [to create a secure mobile payments app] to literally anybody”. Machado estimates that Trustonic’s newly EMVCo-certified platform will make mobile app development for third parties around 50% cheaper and faster.

“Developers need to know that hardware no longer limits innovation,” says Trustonic

By building a payments app within a TEE, developers can guarantee that the code and data loaded inside it are protected and remain confidential. When Trustonic started out in 2012, it soon acquired customers including Samsung Pay, LG Pay, AliPay and WeChat, protecting things like their biometrics systems.

But as these companies expanded exponentially, they decided to build their own in-house solutions for only their individual use.

These original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have therefore hedged out third party developers for some time, who have been unable to access an environment with the same security standards.

In securing its certificate from EMVCo, the global technical body which facilitates worldwide interoperability and acceptance of secure payment transactions, Trustonic can offer these third party developers a certified tool kit which allows them to create mobile payment, banking, mobile point of sale (mPOS), ‘tap on phone’ and software-based PIN entry systems all in a TEE on a par with legacy OEM platforms.

“Developers need to know that hardware no longer limits innovation and user experience, the flexibility of TEE security is nuanced and can be used to deliver simpler, richer and faster user experiences,” says Trustonic’s chief commercial officer Dan Rawlings in a statement.

Trustonic, founded in Cambridge, UK, works with small payments players such as Mobeewave – the Canadian payments app, as well as Casio’s smartwatch business arm and a variety of Korean banks including KB Bank and Shinhan Bank.