Having 4G, enabling cloud based execution for NFC based financial transactions

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a technology which has found wide use in recent years in Mobile Sector. NFC enables your mobile handset to become your secure wallet and it also converts your mobile to a device that easily communicates with NFC tags in a contactless way to trigger any desired action such as approving your credit card payment without requiring you to type your pin number. The Secure Element is a component in NFC which is a tamper-resistant device used to store sensitive user credentials (such as your private keys, or remaining credit amount) and guaranteeing that unauthorized people/applications cannot retrieve/modify them. That´s why an NFC phone can be used as a credit card holder as well. However, having a Secure Element inside a phone requires the management of that sensitive device which leads to many problems such as remote issuance, authorization management, and secure key handling. This paper examines and suggests a cloud based financial transaction execution method for NFC using an online secure element. Our experimental results show that thanks to the 4G Internet speed, having an online connection during a transaction is fast enough to compensate for the delays caused by the execution of cryptographic operations inside the secure element.