As mPOS investment continues, security is strengthened and various applications are applied


Freescale announced that its Kinetis K8x microcontroller family, a family of ARM® Cortex®-M-based MCUs, is now available in volume worldwide.

Freescale also introduced the pin-compatible Kinetis KL8x family of products that leverage the energy efficiency of the ARM® Cortex®-M0+ core to address secure mobile applications, including point-of-sale products, while retaining many of the same security features.

As cashless payments become more viable and consumers become more aware of the ease and convenience of contactless payments, retailers around the world are continuing to invest in electronic mPOS (mobile POS) solutions. According to global market research firm IHS Research, the market is expected to grow to 80 million installed units by 2018.


Manufacturers of mPOS equipment need technology and solutions designed to accommodate this growth while meeting the stringent security and battery life requirements of the latest Internet of Things (IoT)-influenced mobile payment technologies.

Additionally, the Kinetis KL8x MCU family, with its high performance, encryption, tamper detection and ultra-low power capabilities, extends beyond traditional mPOS pin pads and terminals into more power-constrained payment applications, such as readers mounted on smartphones and tablets, and readers embedded in wearable technology.

“These Freescale products extend Freescale’s leadership in the embedded security market, giving mPOS system developers access to capabilities previously available only in high-end processors,” said Steve Tateosian, microcontroller platforms manager for Freescale’s microcontroller group. “With Freescale devices now deployed across a wide range of PCI 4.0-certified POS equipment, our latest Kinetis MCUs are helping to create a more secure future for pervasive mobile payment technologies in the IoT era.”

Kinetics provides high-speed, code-saving, and power-saving data authentication supporting the latest cryptographic protocols with hardware asymmetric encryption. It also features voltage, frequency, temperature and physical attack monitoring with tamper detection, and is designed to be EMV compliant via an EMV® compliant ISO7816-3 SIM interface and supported by an EMV Level 1 software stack. And the crystal-less USB OTG controller, 16-bit ADC and multiple serial communication interfaces can perform all functions autonomously in low-power mode with minimal CPU intervention.

Accelerate PCI Certification with the TWR-POS-K81 Reference Design

To complement these new MCUs, Freescale also announced the TWR-POS-K81 , a complete POS reference design designed to accelerate the device Payment Card Industry (PCI) certification process. Supporting both the K8x and KL8x MCU families, it includes a chip-and-PIN keypad based on Cirque® SecureSense ^TM technology . The solution meets PCI PTS requirements without requiring physical protection of the touch sensor. The TWR-POS-K81 module interfaces to contact and contactless card modules using NXP’s Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Full application software and documentation for PCI PTS 4.x certification (pending) is also available under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).