NXP expands its MIFARE DESFire product portfolio

DESFire EV3 IC is designed to provide greater security and connectivity for contactless smart city services.

NXP has released its new MIFARE DESFire EV3 IC, designed to deliver higher performance and security and enable easier integration of mobile payment services while increasing the security and connectivity of smart city services. The company reports that the IC is backwards compatible with previous generations and offers greater operating distance and faster read speeds. NXP said that combined with its security features, the new IC can enable faster and more secure contactless transactions, such as paying for parking, managing entry and exit to offices or campuses, and other essential city services.

The company reports that the MIFARE DESFire product portfolio was created for bus ticketing applications, while the EV3 IC is designed to provide convenience to end users and reliability to service providers. The IC supports a variety of applications and features a range of features that enable transportation agencies, Access Control solution providers and system integrators to collaborate in a new business model and expand their services.

"We are committed to providing our riders with safe, reliable and flexible transport ticketing solutions," Barry Dorgan, head of ticketing systems at National Transport Ireland, said in a prepared statement. "By using With NXP's proven MIFARE DESFire products, we can continue to provide riders with a safe, convenient and seamless transportation experience."

EV3 IC’s security features protect user data privacy. Both hardware and software are Common Criteria EAL 5+ certified, and the IC supports a selection of open encryption algorithms. The company explains that the card-generated MAC helps securely verify transactions, while the transaction timer feature helps reduce man-in-the-middle attacks, making it difficult for attackers to interfere with transactions.

Additionally, the Secure Unique NFC (SUN) messaging feature provides a secure method for maintaining data confidentiality and integrity. Every time a card, phone, or ticket is tapped with the SUN feature enabled, an NXP report is generated, tapping a unique authentication message and an encrypted secure URL, which are then sent to the server for verification.

Support for MIFARE DESFire EV3 will be integrated into NXP’s MIFARE 2GO cloud service, which manages digital credentials for MIFARE products and helps simplify mobile integration through NXP’s ecosystem. With this feature, smart city services can be deployed to NFC-enabled smartphones, wearables, and other mobile devices.

“With the release of MIFARE DESFire EV3, NXP is laying the foundation for new smart city services that can be used on traditional smart cards or mobile devices,” said NXP’s Philippe Dubois. “The IC’s security features help Preventing fraud and theft, combined with its ability to support a wide range of applications, paves the way for managing many other smart city services in addition to traffic and access control. The contactless solutions provided by NXP can be widely used in society because The global impact of COVID-19 has made contactless transactions a necessity.”

“As a leading manufacturer of RFID-based antennas and a long-term partner of NXP, we are pleased and excited about the enhanced functionality and scalability of the new product, and together with NXP, we will provide more for the construction of smart cities. Practical hardware product and service solutions.

To simplify deployment, the company worked with NXP to pre-configure each EV3 IC with keys to enable delegated application management, enabling seamless over-the-air updates to deployed smart cards using NFC-enabled smartphones. In addition, NXP’s upcoming MIFARE Plus EV2 IC will replace the existing MIFARE Plus and MIFARE Classic products and upgrade to a higher security level.