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Undercover at Money2020, our man in Las Vegas ls lost in booths, babes and benjamins. But can agent 0111 stop a killer new technology from falling into the wrong hands? It’s Main Street vs Infinite Loop in the major new blogbuster from CHYP End… welcome to… Pay Another Day
Part 2: The World Wide Web is not Enough
Bond was standing in S.’s lab looking at the device that had been precisely placed on the desk in front of him.
“I don’t want to appear uninformed, S. old chap, but it looks like an iPhone”.
“Exactly” said S, secretly pleased by James’ first response. “That’s exactly the point. It is an ordinary iPhone. But get this. We’ve loaded a standard EMV token into it and we’re going to send it across to a standard retailer terminal to do a secure payment. “
This was sounding more interesting already. “How?” Said James, turning the sleek slab around in his fingers. “This is an iPhone 5s and it doesn’t have a contactless interface.”
Just the opportunity that S. had been looking for. He got up and walked across to the whiteboard on the far wall and started sketching.
“As you know James, we need to use Host Card Emulation, or HCE, to make the terminal think that the phone is a standard contactless card. While this phone doesn’t have a contactless interface, as you correctly remembered, we’ve come up with another option. We are running the HCE transaction over the Bluetooth low energy interface. “
Nice, Bond thought. He lifted the phone. Ambient light sensor. 40 hours audio playback. Lithium-ion battery. 3.5mm stereo jack. TouchID sensor. H.264 video. 1280×720 pixels. 1080p video. HE-AAC. 8 megapixel camera. Hybrid IR filter. BLE 4.0. GPS/GLONASS. 800:1 contracts and 802.11n wifi. Nice kit.
“You devils”, said James. “You mean you can run full EMV transactions using the same app in iPhones and Android handsets, using the kind of Bluetooth interface that the retailers are installing for marketing purposes, except using it for transactions.”
S. smiled. He amazed himself sometimes.
“That’s not all James. The Hyperlab boffins have also got an app running on the Samsung S5 that uses the FIDO client embedded in the TEE and the handset fingerprint recognition to do secure authentication in a standard framework. We may not have a mobile wallet, but we’ve got all the pieces. All you have to is find out who’s putting them together. Who is adding two and two to make five?”.
By the time he got back to his desk, Moneysatoshi was there with the confirmation code for his plane reservation to Vegas and the directions to the Aria hotel.
“She wants to see you again”, said Moneysatoshi. James turned on his heels and walked over to G.
“You’re going to Money2020,” she said. “7,500 of the world’s leading payment professionals. If anything were to happen to them, the result could be devastating. In anywhere between three and five years, people would begin to notice that their credit cards hadn’t been reissued for a while and that the swipe terminals in shop were getting a little dated. We can’t let that happen James.”
Bond nodded, more to show her that he understood the gravity of the situation than to let her know he understood her point, and then asked the obvious: “How will I get in?”
“I’ve got our best people on it right now”, G. said. “All we’ve got to do is get into the Money2020 computer and search through the delegates to find one for you to replace. The girls downstairs have been told to search through to find a handsome, articulate and charming Englishman that women cannot resist. Then you can take his place.”
As she was talking, Moneysatoshi came in, waving around a picture on her smartphone screen.
“They’ve found the perfect one, G.”, Moneysatoshi reported, excitedly. “They haven’t got a name yet, only a Twitter handle, but they’ll have the details for you soon”.
“Twitter handle”, said Bond, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes,” said Moneysatoshi, holding the screen up for James to see. “See. It’s @dgwbirch”.
[Part 3: Magstripes are Forever]
