NXP Enables Enhanced Guest Experiences and Mobile Interactions with New MIFARE Hospitality IC 18. June 2019
NXP today announced MIFARE® Hospitality, a secure, cost-efficient contactless IC tailored for the hospitality industry. Designed for quick integration into Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) key cards, MIFARE Hospitality offers enhanced security with seamless guest interactions, so hotel owners and hotel brands can issue basic guest cards that support secure hotel room access while enabling high-demanded mobile features.
The MIFARE Hospitality chip gives guests secure access to hotel rooms and other hotel facilities while taking advantage of mobile interactions, such as Wi-Fi pairing, adding customized guest information, and easy sign-ups to the hotel brand’s loyalty program for discounts and additional offers.
“MIFARE Hospitality is a cost-effective way to transition away from legacy access technologies, such as mechanical keys, embossed cards, magnetic-stripe cards, and previous generations of RFID cards and, at the same time, meets the growing demand for mobile experiences,” says Christoph Zwahlen, Global Marketing Manager at NXP Semiconductors. “Hotel owners and hotel brands can use MIFARE Hospitality to improve guest experiences while also differentiating themselves from online travel agents and from the peer-to-peer hospitality segment, where homeowners rent private properties.”
Through the pre-configured NFC function (NFC Forum Type 2 Tag), the MIFARE Hospitality IC lets operators put a brand activation channel in the hands of each guest, by creating customized and meaningful guest experiences using RFID key cards in combination with mobile devices. The security features of MIFARE Hospitality can contribute to a secure RFID lock system, for increased safety during each guest’s stay. The IC supports limited use cases and comes with secure authentication features (3DES) optimized for basic guest cards. It offers up to 96 bytes of protected memory for secure room access and up to 96 bytes plain user memory for guest interactions. The IC also leverages existing technologies for easier integration and migration to newer systems that let hotel brands keep pace with future requirements.
Major suppliers to the hospitality industry, especially lock manufacturers, already support NXP’s MIFARE Hospitality IC, and NXP is collaborating with ecosystem partners to help facilitate the transition from legacy technologies to contactless RFID-based key cards.
NXP is a technology provider and its MIFARE product portfolio is in use in today’s RFID key cards in several hospitality applications. Leveraging from existing MIFARE product-based infrastructures improves time to market and streamlines mobile integration for Android and iOS operating systems via NXP’s ecosystem. MIFARE products are used in over 750 cities worldwide for public transport and accompanies more than 1.2B people in their daily life.
The MIFARE Hospitality IC is available now and released for general availability. For more information, contact mifare@nxp.com or visit the MIFARE Hospitality product page.