Socket Mobile’s SocketScan S550 Contactless Reader Achieves Google Wallet Certification

By AIT News Desk On Nov 20, 2020

Socket Mobile, Inc., a leading innovator of data capture and delivery solutions for enhanced productivity, announced that the SocketScan S550 Contactless Membership Card Reader/Writer has passed the Google Wallet Certification process.

Socket Mobile is a member of Google’s Smart Tap partner program, which lists certified providers of Smart Tap capable terminals. With Google Pay Smart Tap, mobile passes are stored in the Google Pay wallet, along with payment and transit cards. These passes use NFC technology to facilitate a secure, contactless transaction. When deployed with a merchant application developed using Socket’s SDK, the S550 automatically selects the merchant’s mobile pass from the consumer’s Google Wallet. The consumer activates the pass by tapping their phone on the S550.

Mobile passes are virtualized evolutions of physical cards that are managed by the consumer in their digital wallet. Just like physical cards, mobile passes can be branded and made to support specific use cases. Unlike physical cards, with mobile passes the consumer performs ID verification on their own phone (which facilitates social distancing). This allows the merchant to deliver experiences on the consumer’s phone without needing a merchant-specific app.

Mobile pass creation via Google provides pass types for loyalty programs, membership cards, event tickets, coupons/offers, and check-in/checkout. The end-user tapping experience is similar to the Google Pay process. However, instead of interacting with the payment process, the end-user’s device interacts with the vast ecosystem infrastructure of Google Smart Tap, enabling organizations and companies to deliver exceptional user experiences through various applications.

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Socket Mobile’s focus is loyalty cards, memberships, and other customer-related services. The S550 was designed to address the needs of these markets. As a mobile-phone agnostic device, it is a versatile, fast and convenient solution; the S550 pairs this smooth end-user experience with a high level of security by capturing a cryptographically generated payload from the mobile pass, then transmitting this payload over secure Bluetooth to a device running a connected application.

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“The S550 delivers an engaging, contactless, and frictionless experience for your customers and guests using mobile passes. The Capture SDK provides our developers with the tools to use the magic of the Google Wallet eco-system. We’re excited to be at the forefront of these new mobile pass capabilities and their ability to improve customer experiences,” said Vince Coli, Staff Director, Technical Product Marketing.

Socket’s Capture SDK enables its app developer community to build connected apps using the S550 to unite this ecosystem. Socket Mobile Nice2CU application, available via the Apple app store (and soon as open source on GitHub), is a simple membership check-in/ checkout app demonstrating the power and potential capabilities of the solution. Following the “enroll new user” in the Nice2CU app automatically provides the pass appropriate for the wallet on the user’s phone, be it Apple or Google.

The S550 contactless reader reads most NFC cards as well as mobile passes.

In addition, it supports tags from NFC Forum, NXP, STMicro, Mifare and much more.

The S550 works with Android, iOS and Windows Bluetooth-enabled host devices and can be fully integrated and controlled by an Android, iOS or Windows application.