Written by 
The demand for Infineon’s SOLID FLASH™ security solutions is further gaining momentum. As the company announced, shipments of SOLID FLASH ICs for payment applications are expected to reach 1.5 billion units by the end of calendar year 2014. This represents a 15-fold increase of shipments within two years. Infineon pioneered highly secure yet very flexible security platforms for smart card applications; the company is now the industry’s sole supplier of commercialized and field-proven products with this technology for payment cards as well as driver licenses or electronic identification documents.
“Our SOLID FLASH portfolio gives us the strength to grow above average in the smart card payment market. For example, every second EMV payment card issued in the USA is already based on our products”, says Thomas Rosteck, Vice President and General Manager at the Chip Card & Security Division at Infineon Technologies. “Our flexible technology improves competitiveness of smart card manufacturers by reducing their manufacturing costs and improving time-to-market and enables them to better respond to increasing worldwide demand with ongoing EMV migration”, he adds.
SOLID FLASH security chips improve competitiveness of smart card manufacturers by enabling flexible card design and production and shortening time-to-market. Furthermore, SOLID FLASH provides unrivalled memory capacity necessary for multi-application use such as payment or identification applications combined with contactless ticketing solutions in public transport. The Infineon flexible security controllers fulfill today’s highest security standards. They are certified up to EAL 6+ (high) according to the international “Common Criteria” standard and have EMVCo approvals.
Except for smart cards, SOLID FLASH technology combined with small form factors is ideally suited for smart wearable devices. This allows device manufacturers to design products combining various applications such as payment with transport ticketing at highest security levels.
Previously, security controllers were based on ROM and EEPROM memory technology only, which – with regards to flexibility of the end products and miniaturization – is reaching its technical limits. SOLID FLASH combines a more flexible memory technology with a sophisticated security mechanism and highest reliability. Today, SOLID FLASH is established as de-facto standard for future-proof payment cards and gains further acceptance for use in electronic official documents such as eIDs or ePassports.
Further information about SOLID FLASH technology and the comprehensive chip card and security IC portfolio of Infineon is available at: http://www.infineon.com/chip-card-and-security