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Introduced on Android 4.4 (KitKat), Host Card Emulation (HCE) allows for contactless payments (and other services including loyalty programs, building access and transit passes) to be made directly between the consumers’ bank mobile application and the retailers point-of-sale, using NFC technology. It allows sensitive data used to facilitate transactions to be stored on, and accessed from, cloud servers rather than a mobile device and without the use of a hardware secure element. HCE therefore enables widespread deployment of mobile payments, which have previously been restricted by the limited deployment of hardware secure elements in mobile devices. However HCE adoption has been hampered by the security concerns associated with software payment applications running on open mobile platforms.

MatrixHCE combines INSIDE Secure’s long expertise in payments security with the software security expertise it gained from Metaforic, a company acquired by INSIDE Secure on April 5, 2014, to address these concerns and offer the highest possible level of software security.

MatrixHCE supports the HCE payment standards announced by major payment brands such as Mastercard and VISA, in preparation for the global commercial rollout later this year. It benefits from the software obfuscation and whitebox encryption security technologies developed by Metaforic. These have successfully undergone extensive penetration tests at external security labs. MatrixHCE also embeds secure networking communication technologies to protect the exchanges between the cloud server and the mobile application, thereby further protecting banking and payment data.