company founded by Philips, and Renesas Technology Corp., a world leading supplier of microcontrollers, today announced that they have expanded the licensing agreement on NXP’s MIFARE™ technology. This agreement is aiming to build momentum for the availability of advanced payment and Near Field Communication (NFC) offerings in contactless infrastructures.
As a historical MIFARE licensee, Renesas now has further access to NXP’s entire MIFARE family. MIFARE is the most widespread contactless technology, providing superior levels of performance, flexibility and security in the automatic fare collection, access management, event ticketing and customer loyalty markets.

The license agreement supports the industry’s need for extension of contactless applications to new form factors and will further strengthen Renesas' global position in the secure MCU markets for high-end mobile and dual-interface banking applications. Renesas plans to provide a full range of security products with MIFARE to meet the requirements of mobile and contactless payment industries world-wide.

Christophe Duverne, senior vice president and general manager, identification business, NXP Semiconductors, said: “The booming market for contactless smart card applications is calling for closer industry collaboration. NXP’s agreement with Renesas to license the MIFARE portfolio, including MIFARE DESFire and MIFARE Plus, is a step towards providing advanced contactless solutions that bring greater convenience and ease of use to the global consumer. We are delighted to continue to work with Renesas to bring next-generation performance and security to new contactless application deployments."

"NXP’s MIFARE technology has been hugely successful for contactless application deployments around the world, and the expansion of the MIFARE license agreement ensures that Renesas enhances the secure contactless product portfolio," said Yasushi Akao, Board Director and Executive General Manager of MCU Business Group, Renesas Technology Corp. "The agreement with NXP is enabling us to cater the further emergence of the worldwide contactless ecosystem especially focusing on advanced applications for payment and mobile devices."

The agreement is set to drive the emergence of new and advanced over-the-air mobile phone services based on NFC, such as electronic ticketing and payment, delivering convenient and user-friendly connected services to consumers while allowing mobile network operators to increase average revenue per user.

About NXP Semiconductors

NXP is a leading semiconductor company founded by Philips more than 50 years ago. NXP creates semiconductors, system solutions and software that deliver better sensory experiences in TVs, set-top boxes, identification applications, mobile phones, cars and a wide range of other electronic devices. 

About Renesas Technology Corp.

Renesas Technology Corp. is one of the world’s leading semiconductor system solutions providers for mobile, automotive and PC/AV (Audio Visual) markets and the world's No.1 supplier of microcontrollers. It is also a leading provider of LCD Driver ICs, Smart Card microcontrollers, RF-ICs, High Power Amplifiers, Mixed Signal ICs, System-on-Chip (SoC), System-in-Package (SiP) and more. Established in 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation,  Renesas Technology is based in Tokyo, Japan and has a global network of manufacturing, design and sales operations in 17 countries with 26,800 employees worldwide. 

Information Source:    NXP