First Data Corporation, a provider of electronic commerce and payment processing services, today announced it has achieved Discover qualification for its First Data Trusted Service Management solution.

This qualification enables First Data to support financial institutions in the deployment of Near Field Communications services on mobile devices.

"Being one of the first brands to pilot NFC wallets and to issue mobile payment stickers, Discover now has a TSM qualification process that provides our partners with confidence that the platform powering their NFC-based products is highly secure," said Troy Bernard, global head of chip payment products at Discover.

First Data built its TSM solution as a managed service model that allows account issuers such as financial institutions to integrate once and avoid the complexity of costly, many-to-many integrations with little return on investment.

With a single interface that gives financial institutions access to most major NFC-enabled mobile wallets, the First Data TSM solution simplifies FIs' entry into mobile payments and makes it easy for them to provide their customers the experience they expect regardless of the wallet selected.

"The Discover qualification is another important milestone for the First Data TSM solution, which is still the only commercially launched program at scale," said Dom Morea, SVP and division manager of advanced solutions and innovation at First Data. "Because First Data issuing clients are pre-integrated to our TSM, financial institutions can manage a relationship with one TSM rather than with numerous mobile network operators and mobile wallet owners. Our secure element owner-neutral model also has the ability to securely provision financial institutions' accounts to a variety of SE destinations."

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