An upbeat assessment of the prospects for NFC-based mobile payment following the rise of Host Card Emulation (HCE) has been delivered by Frederic Vasnier, chairman of the SIMalliance, the industry association whose members account for a majority of the global market for SIM cards.

Vasnier echoes many of the points made by a recent GSMA/Consult Hyperion report in his forecasts of a hybrid approach which mixes both HCE and the secure element.

He said HCE can deliver a rapid adoption of NFC services that will also benefit SIM-based services. But the enhanced security offered by a secure element means a SIM-based approach is better for more valuable transactions.

Even when a payment service provider opts for a HCE-tokenisation approach, there is still a role for mobile operators and their secure element to play, said Vasnier.

Users can authenticate to the token service provider using stored credentials on the secure element.

“Additionally, the risks introduced by storing tokens in a non-secure environment may be manageable for low value credentials, but are likely to be unacceptable when dealing with high value credentials, so the storage of tokens in a tamper resistant secure element inevitably provides the most secure solution,” he said.