NXP has upgraded its offerings with the release of the MIFARE DESFire EV3 IC. The EV3 is the third iteration of the contactless MIFARE DESFire product, and introduces a slew of performance improvements to support a number of different smart city applications.

To that end, the EV3 has a greater scanning range than its predecessors. It offers faster transaction speeds, and is backwards compatible with previous MIFARE DESFire products. Potential applications include parking, access control, and mass transit programs.

The EV3 IC will also be compatible with the MIFARE 2GO cloud service, which means that organizations will be able to use it to enable smart city applications on any device with NFC capabilities. That includes smartphones in addition to wearable devices.

“With the launch of MIFARE DESFire EV3, NXP is laying the foundation for a new level of connected smart city services that are form factor independent and can be available on a traditional smart card or mobile device,” said NXP VP and IoT Security and Secure Mobility & Retail GM Philippe Dubois. “The security features of the IC help prevent fraud and theft and paves the way for managing many other smart city services beyond transit and access control.”

The IC hardware and software support open crypto algorithms, and are certified in accordance with Common Criteria EAL 5+ standards. It also has a Transaction Timer for additional security, and utilizes a Secure Unique NFC (SUN) messaging feature that generates a unique authentication message for each tap. That message is then sent to a server for verification to prevent cloning.

MIFARE 2GO was recently used to create a mobile version of Public Transit Victoria’s myki transit cards. NXP previously added support for Google Pay back in 2018.

NXP has also released several new MCUs in the past few months. Most of those MCUs are geared towards IoT devices.