Toro (NFC startup company)

Toro Development Ltd. (Toro Ltd. or Toro) is founded in March 2007 to address the very promising market of Near-Field Communication (NFC) services. The company focuses on the front-end part of NFC application development, including the distribution and management of NFC services. Toro provides the user-interface(UI.) corresponding to the NFC applications on the secure element(s) of the phone, and on non-secure NFC applications (marketing, CRM, etc.). For that matter, Toro has developed and continues developing a mobile software suite ('akamisuite'') that is complementary to the systems developed by the Trusted Service Managers (TSMs), and that is necessary to seamlessly distribute NFC services to end-users. In the NFC value chain, this front-end module is described as an NFC User Management System. One of the modules of this NFC User Management System is aNFC mobile wallet'''.

Product: akami suite

Toro’s product is akami suite, a front-end mobile platform for NFC services. This platform runs across smart card, NFC mobile phones, secure servers, and the Internet.akami suiteis composed of several modules: a mobile client, a widget system, an application server, an SDK, and a series of plug-ins.

akami mobile

Mobile client on the phone: akami mobile is a mobile application (MIDlet for J2ME, or native for other mobile OS) that aggregates all the secure applications located on the secure element of a mobile. It brings back the UI. that application issuers lose when their application gets “dematerialized” (from a plastic card in a wallet, to a secure domain inside the SIM card). akami mobile is a runtime environment (or virtual machine, interpreter) that can host a widget system.

akami widgets

Widget system: akami mobile is dynamic thanks to its akami widget system; it has the ability to mesh and evolve with the TSMs’ services, and enable easy add/remove service operations.

akami manage

Back-office for the management of mobile clients/widgets: akami manage allows the remote administration of the mobile client downloads, local and remote management of the akami widgets, management of the akami mobile versions depending on phone platforms (J2ME, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, Android) and NFC phone models.

akami SDK

Software development kit for developers: Third party developers can us the akami SDK to develop akami widgets and host them in the application server fro distribution.

akami plug-ins

(1) Web interface for end-users: End-users need an easy and convenient access to NFC services. Toro develops interfaces for users to pick, sync and use the hundreds of applications that will soon be available to them.

(2) Smart posters: akami manage controls the smart poster iDs, and links them to a content hosted in the TSM server or in non-secure servers. Users can download coupons widgets and promotions from such smart posters.

Management

Articles about Toro

• Giesecke & Devrient and TORO Develop Innovative Offering for Mobile Financial Applications
• Toro a Sesames finalist, in NFCNews
• Red Herring Top 100 Asia winners

Trials and commercial deployments of akami suite

• ING mobile in Romania - 500 users. Project conducted with MasterCard, Collis and Venyon (a Giesecke & Devrient company)
• Nice, NFC City - 3500 users. Project conducted with Gemalto, AFSCM, 3 French banks.
• Kbank, Bangkok - 500 users. project conducted with Gemalto, Visa.
• Saint-Petersburg Metro. Project conducted with Ambiq Technologies and Bladox

Awards and recognition

• Nov. 2010: Finalist of Sesames Awards at Cartes 2010 (Paris, France) - Category MOBILITY.
• Nov. 2009: Winner of Red Herring 100 Asia
• Nov. 2009: Finalist for the prestigious Sesames Innovation Awards at Cartes 2009 (Paris, France) - Category MOBILE.
• Nov. 2008: Toro was selected among 32 mobile startups globally to present at the prestigious Under-The-Radar conference (Mountain view, CA -USA)
• Oct. 2008: Toro received the Award for most innovative company for NFC services (jury composed of Chinese Cultural University, FarEastone, NXP).
• Since Jan. 2008, Toro is an associate member of the NFC Forum.
• Nov. 2007: Toro was finalist for the GSMA Mobile Innovation Awards in the category “most innovative application in a vertical market”.
• Since April 2007, Toro is the official organizer of the Mobile Monday Taipei monthly events.

External links

• Official Website 1