Renesas & Panthronics Unveil New Design for mPoS Terminals
The mPoS design is based on Panthronics’ PTX100R NFC Reader IC for contactless communication and Renesas RA6M4 general-purpose secure microcontroller (MCU).
Panthronics and Renesas Electronics have released a new design that provides manufacturers of secure mobile point-of-sale (mPoS) contactless payment terminals with a new way to reduce the size and the bill-of-materials cost of their products without compromising performance or security.
The companies are demonstrating the new mPoS design at the Panthronics stand 5.2 B041 at the Trustech exhibition (Paris, France, 30 November-2 December 2021).
Markus Vomfelde, European Senior Manager for MCU Business Development at Renesas, said: “Security, cost and size are the key concerns for manufacturers of the next generation of mPoS terminals, as they battle for market share in a highly competitive market. By proving that a mPoS terminal based on a standard MCU can be fully compliant with all the relevant security and payment industry standards, Renesas and Panthronics have demonstrated a new way for terminal manufacturers to gain a competitive edge while meeting customer demand for security, functionality and performance. We are confident that with this solution, mPoS terminal manufacturers can achieve a BoM cost saving of at least 10% compared to typical designs in production today.”
The design is based on Panthronics’ PTX100R NFC Reader IC for contactless communication, and the Renesas RA6M4 general-purpose secure microcontroller (MCU).
The RA6M4 MCU, which has an Arm Cortex-M33 CPU with TrustZone technology and integrated security IP, performs all the cryptographic, key management and other security functions required for compliance with the stringent Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards and the EMVCo Level 2 standard for contactless payments. EMVCo Level 1-compliant software runs in the PTX100R.
This design based on a secure MCU offers substantial cost and size advantages over conventional mPoS terminal designs. Today, mPoS terminals feature either a combination of a general-purpose MCU with a discrete Secure Element or a dedicated PoS-specific system-on-chip (SoC) with built-in security functions.
The mPoS solution implements a comprehensive set of payment terminal functions, including EMVCo Level 1 and Level 2 ready software.
This means that it provides an effective platform for terminal manufacturers to verify the concept’s compliance with the EMVCo standard, and to complete rapid design integration based on the hardware and software components supplied by Renesas and Panthronics.
The design includes a space-saving antenna that surrounds the display screen, a configuration which is only possible because of the robust connectivity performance of the PTX100R card reader.
