The fortunes of the mobile payment and biometric security boom are beginning to trickle down to the rest of the digital security industry, if Gemalto is any indication. The digital security company posted encouraging revenue figures yesterday indicating that mobile commerce is blowing up into a major market.
Speaking in a press release, Gemalto CEO Olivier Piou commented that “the business case for secure elements to protect mobile and online payment transactions has been considerably strengthened during the quarter, and the ecosystem is clearly converging towards NFC for convenient proximity interactions.” The figures bear that out: Gemalto posted overall revenue growth of six percent, but revenue for online payment specifically is up 20 percent, led by the implementation of EMV and NFC technology at retailers’ POS terminals in the US. Meanwhile, while the company’s platforms and services grew by 16 percent, its mobile financial services business grew by 45 percent.
As Mr. Piou noted, “Embedded security in connected devices is proliferating, fuelling the opportunities outlined in our multi-year development plan.”
Indeed, it seems that much of the company’s growth in the realm of mobile commerce can be attributed to one major player: Apple, which over the past year or so has introduced embedded mobile biometric security to the mass market, in the form of its mobile devices’ Touch ID fingerprint scanner, and is now pushing retailers toward mobile payments with its Apple Pay platform, aided by industry regulations encouraging retailers to adopt EMV and NFC technology at their POS. With Apple leading the charge, other have followed suit, with smaller smartphone manufacturers incorporating biometric scanners into their phones and competing mobile payment services starting to enter the ring.
It’s all good news for a company like Gemalto, which “anticipates double-digit expansion in profit for the full year” in its earnings report.
—
October 24, 2014 – by Alex Perala
Follow Us