Mobile Smart Card Reader Using NFC-Enabled Smartphones

Due to the increasing use of electronic systems in all fields of everyday life, users are now having to deal with electronic identification and authentication practically every day. Password based authentication systems are neither secure nor particularly convenient for users. Here, we are presenting the idea of using an NFC-enabled mobile phone as a chip card reader for contactless smart cards. A mobile phone can be used to visualise, inspect and control electronic transactions. This mobile smart card reader implementation enables ubiquitous, secure and convenient two-factor authentication, the mobile phone being a very personal device which users guard carefully and with which they are particularly familiar. In this paper, we discuss the concept and implementation details of the mobile reader and present a use case for the German electronic identity card.