Zebrasign puts one more nail in stripecard coffin

The secure SIM allows transactions to take place across any platform. The SIM contains the user's digital certificate and acts as an authentication token while the phone operates as a smartcard reader. The incorporated PKI gives users a secret key to unscramble encrypted messages.

Speaking to silicon.com, Andreas Andersen, senior consultant at ZebraSign, said the technology will be simple to use and the company expects some service providers to use this method to offer secure payments in the spring:

"End users can now buy goods from any platform by authenticating themselves through once-used passwords that they receive via SMS from the service provider. They then reply with the password and sign the message with an automatically generated digital signature."

The announcement comes in the wake of security experts predicting the demise of smartcards because of end-user difficulties and standardisation problems.

John Ryan, CEO of PKI vendor Entrust, said: "Mobile phones are ideal as smartcard readers because users are familiar with the device and there are very few standardisation issues."