Apple Pay went live in Japan earlier this week, allowing consumers to use their iPhones and Apple Watches to pay for goods and services with a simple touch.
IBM Japan – using Rambus’ complete token service provider (TSP) technology – will support Japanese banks with Apple Pay integration and mobile payments security across a range of international payment platforms and, importantly, the FeliCa (Felicity Card) regional scheme.
The FeliCa chip, installed in the iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch series 2 model sold in Japan, allows users to pass through automatic ticket gates at train stations and easily make contactless payments.
“Issuing banks can now work with IBM Japan to manage the real-time enrollment, provisioning and tokenization needed to offer Apple Pay to account holders,” stated David Orme, the head of sales for Rambus. “Tokenization removes sensitive payment credentials from the transaction process, replacing them with a ‘token’. This means that it is virtually worthless if intercepted by fraudsters, as the token can only be mapped back to a customer’s original account details by authorized parties.”
According to Orme, Rambus’ TSP solution also supports customer enrollment with authorized third-party apps.
“This provides greater flexibility, choice and convenience to end-users as, for example, they have the option to authenticate themselves using existing credentials in their mobile banking application,” he added.
As we’ve previously discussed on Rambus Press, mobile-driven commerce is projected to reach an estimated $972.25 billion across 46 markets in 2016, with mobile payments expected to hit $3 trillion by 2021. Indeed, according to a recent Euromonitor International survey cited by MobilePaymentsToday, mobile’s ratio of digital commerce in the United States is slated to increase from 20% in 2015 to 46% in 2020. Meanwhile, an estimated 38% of digital commerce in the U.K. is expected to occur on a mobile device in 2020, up from 12% in 2015. Moreover, 17% of all consumer payments are already executed via a device in the UK, as mobile emerges as the clearly preferred device for commerce.
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