14 DAY TRIAL // Giesecke & Devrient (G&D), the world's second largest producer of smart cards, and Nokia announced earlier this week the completion of a global joint venture. The name of the new company is Venyon, and it is 57 percent owned by G&D and 43 percent owned by Nokia.
Venyon prepares the way for mobile operators, transport operators, retailers, banks, credit card companies, and providers of digital services and media worldwide to offer their services and applications to consumers' Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile devices. With the company's Secure Chip Management services, consumer applications - such as credit cards or transport tickets - can be securely and easily downloaded via a mobile operator's network to those devices.
The joint venture will implement and operate a secure and versatile service platform to manage the over-the-air transactions with consumers' NFC enabled devices. The service platform will be operated in a white-label mode with in-built interfaces to the IT systems of the actual service providers, such as banks issuing credit cards. The over-the-air services will be offered to all parties in the NFC ecosystem, where mobile operators and other service providers are exploring the opportunities to cooperate in launching new services to consumers.
The Venyon headquarters are located in Helsinki, Finland and another office in Munich, Germany is already established. Further locations are planned to be opened in Dallas, U.S. and Singapore.
The joint venture is expected to commence operations by the end of this year.