MWC: Smartphones become hotel room keys

At the Mobile World Congress, NXP Semiconductors announced that its OpenWays Mobile Key lets guests unlock their hotel room door using a NFC capable smartphone.

NXP Semiconductors has announced that its identification technology enables a new enhanced version of the popular OpenWays mobile hotel key service. OpenWays Mobile Key accelerates the check-in process allowing the guests to bypass the check-in, receive their room number and use their mobile phone as the hotel room key. Through its work with NXP OpenWays can now include NFC technology into their service, enabling hotel chains to provide their guests with an ultramodern, future proof access solution. The OpenWays Mobile Key DUAL© with Pure NFC will be incorporated into the Mobile Key service offered by major hotel chains starting with Nordic Choice Hotels in Scandinavia.

OpenWays, a provider of mobile key solutions, recognised the convenience of NFC and selected NXP for its superior end-to-end solutions expertise to help create the Mobile Key DUAL with Pure NFC service hotel key system. The smartphones will securely transmit hotel key credentials to the room door lock via NFC. The OpenWays door lock utilises the flexible NXP PN512 NFC transceiver IC and software stack while the OpenWays application is based on NXP’s open source NFC operating stack integration for Symbian, Android and other operating systems.

NXP helped to add NFC support with optimized antennas to the previously introduced CAC (Crypto Acoustic Credential) technology within the power efficient and compact OpenWays reader. This brings OpenWays into the unique position to operate across all phones, carriers and lock systems today. The result is a simple, reliable, secure and intuitive NFC key service that is cost-effective to deploy in new hotel development and hotel upgrades. The OpenWays NFC reader is available in form factors allowing both an upgrade to existing hotel locks and in a OEM version for embedding into new locks.

‚We selected NXP because of its NFC and contactless leadership position as well as its expertise in embedded mobile security. As top hotel chains deploy mobile front desk bypass services, they demand solutions that are truly deployable today while being future proof. As NFC phones continue to appear on the market it was logical to add NFC support to our Mobile Key offering while remaining fully interoperable and ubiquitous,‚ said Pascal Metivier, founder and CEO of OpenWays. ‚Having on our side a technology provider with long-standing, end-to-end NFC and security expertize is very important to us. NXP’s position as the co-founder of NFC and potential to collaborate and bring new secure NFC innovations to market with short design in cycles made them the ideal partner.‚

‚New innovative services such as OpenWays Mobile Key are exactly what we envisioned as the value add of NFC enabled mobile solutions,‚ said Henri Ardevol, vice president and general manager, secure transactions, NXP Semiconductors. ‚We are happy to contribute our expertise across the contactless and security ecosystems as well as our extensive NFC domain knowledge to OpenWays.‚

NFC is a market proven, standardised technology co-invented by NXP and Sony in 2002. NXP is at the center of this ecosystem, fueling its development by partnering with almost all major handset manufacturers, mobile OS providers and applications developers. NXP is the No1 supplier to the Identification market globally, and leverages its leadership in contactless and security technologies to provide complete Mobile Transactions solutions: NFC controllers, Secure Elements in all form factors, NFC tags and infrastructure reader ICs. Currently OEMs have selected NXP’s NFC technology for more than 130 mobile devices.

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