For example: handset vendors Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola are the lynchpins of the Global M-commerce Standard alliance's mission to develop standards to reduce the time to market for mobile infrastructure technologies. .
In 2001 credit card companies Visa, MasterCard and American Express joined forces in an unprecedented way to create the Mobile Payment Forum to create technical standards for m-commerce to authenticate cardholder identities and provide a secure mobile purchasing medium for their customers; and in June 2002, smart card solutions vendor Gemplus signed a strategic alliance with iPIN, the EPP (enterprise payment platform) to provide new payment capability for the prepay mobile market. .
SMART CARD-SMART COMMERCE .
Thanks to its role in the rise of consumer-driven mobile telephony--the SIM (subscriber identity module) card which identifies the subscriber to the network operator is a practically universal handset component--the smart card is a keystone of the m-commerce industry, particularly with its capacity to deliver more data-intensive wireless applications as data speeds ramp up through GPRS and on to 3G. .
Its m-commerce role isn't limited to telephony, of course. The advent of Bluetooth, the short range ITS band wireless data protocol, has endorsed the smart card's position in localised m-commerce applications, facilitating kiosk and close proximity transactions like transport ticket purchases. Even the arrival of WAP technology allowing mobile devices to access the web and Internet-based services has kept the smart card at the heart of m-commerce evolution; its WIM (WAP Identity Module) specification requires smart card-based authentication and digital signature technology to protect the user's security. .
Manufacturers have addressed the issue of multiple proprietary technologies by co-operating to create standards based around Java-compliant operating systems, demonstrating applications which work across a variety of SIM cards and boosting the memory capacity of their products.
