Everyone agrees that the trusted service manager, or TSM, has a crucial role to play in mobile payments. Views of what tasks fall to the TSM vary but most agree they will manage NFC services using the networks of mobile operators, as well as manage the commercial relationships between service providers and operators. Already a few names are familiar in taking the role of TSM with leading mobile operators: Gemalto’s solution will be used by the Isis joint venture between the three US mobile operators AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA. And it is fulfilling a similar role as part of a consortium in Singapore which includes the city-state’s leading mobile operators. Gemalto is also performing the TSM role for Barclaycard/Orange in the UK and is thought to be supplying its solution to Deutsche Telekom although this has not been officially confirmed.

Meanwhile rival Giesecke & Devrient has won the contract to supply Telefonica with its TSM solution in Europe. A third competitor to Gemalto and G&D, and like them a smartcard manufacturer, is Oberthur. So far so good but now the Yankee Group has come up with a new concept: the uber-TSM. The nub of the research firm’s argument is that in the future users might have several electronic wallets on their handsets, the result of competing business models. While mobile operators support a SIM-based location for the secure element, handset vendors might choose another location on the handset. And vendors such as Tyfone and DeviceFidelity who specialise in microSD cards and NFC-enabled handset cases offer further competition over the secure element.

Yankee summarises the role of the uber-TSM as “a gatekeeper” who would be “connecting the many separate wallets and managing the provisioning of sensitive card payment credentials to the right place, potentially in multiple secure element locations”.

What essentially Yankee is suggesting is a mobile wallet aggregator with an important role in both making mobile transactions user friendly but also secure. Senior analyst Nick Holland has several candidates in mind who could fulfil what promises to be a powerful position in the emerging mobile money market. He says Gemalto, G&D and Oberthur are in the frame. He also mentions vendor Tyfone because it has expertise in secure element management.  And Corfire, the US mcommerce unit of Korean firm SK C&C. Last summer Corfire announced it was working with InComm, a US prepaid card provider, on a wallet for retailers, competing with Isis and Google Wallet.  Interestingly, he also mentions that traditional telecoms vendors such as Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson are in the race too. And there is newcomer Sequent which is positioning itself as a neutral broker in managing secure elements.  So a number of rivals, with competitive approaches, but one thing is for sure, there is a lot at stake. In Yankee’s view, success will mean “great rewards” while failure will mean “a lack of consumer trust” and the potential “exposure of millions of payment cards credentials”.

The editorial views expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and will not necessarily reflect the views of the GSMA, its Members or Associate Members.