Toro (Near-field communications wallet platform provider)
 | |
| Industry | NFC, Near-Field Communication |
|---|---|
| Founded | March 2007 |
| Founders | Laurent Renard & Grégory Puente-Castan |
| Headquarters |
|
| Products | akami suite |
| Services | Front-end mobile platform for NFC services |
Number of employees | 50 |
| Subsidiaries | Toro Development Europe sarl, France; Toro Turkey V.A.R. |
| Website | www.toro-intl.com |
Toro Development Ltd. (Toro Ltd. or Toro) was 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 an NFC Wallet Platform (akami suite) 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 a NFC Wallet.
Product: akami suite
Toro’s product is akami suite , a front-end platform for NFC wallet application. This platform runs across smart card, NFC mobile phones, secure servers, and the Internet. akami suite is composed of several modules: a mobile client, a widget system, an application server, an SDK, and a series of plug-ins.
akami wallet
akami wallet is an NFC mobile wallet 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 wallet is a runtime environment (or virtual machine, interpreter) that can host a widget system.
| OS platform | Availability |
|---|---|
| J2ME | June 2009 |
| Blackberry | Feb. 2010 |
| Android | May 2010 |
| Windows Phone 8 | Q2 2013 |
| iPhone | Q4 2013 |
| Bada | Q3 2012 |
akami widgets
Widget system:[1] akami wallet 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 use the akami SDK to develop akami widgets and host them in the application server for 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
| Name | Title |
|---|---|
| Philippe Staib | Executive Chairman of the Board |
| Laurent Renard | Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer |
| Gregory Puente-Castan | Co-Founder & Chief Technical Officer |
| Sour Chhor | Chief Operation Officer & General Manager of Toro EU |
| Arnaud Level | Head of Project Deliveries |
| José García Chico | Head of R&D |
| Sergio Sanchez | Head of Mobile Software |
| Yu-Lian (Bernie) Chen | Head of Server Software |
| Marcel Ficken | General Manager of Toro Turkey Office |
Articles about Toro
- Nokia to Launch NFC Tag Applications in Taiwan.
- 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
- Taipei, Taiwan - Project conducted with Nokia Taiwan, NFC mobile wallet for Open NFC services
- T-Mobile MyWallet in Poland - Commercial launch in Oct, 2012. Project conducted with MasterCard, and Gemalto
Awards and recognition
- Nov. 2012: Winner of Sesames Awards at Cartes 2012 (Paris, France) - Category Banking/Retail and Loyalty.
- 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.
References
- ↑ Widgets are independent applications that run in a controlled environment. Here, akami widgets are installed inside the akami wallet, and makes use of its resources to access the functions of the phone. A given akami widget can run on any phone, provided akami wallet is installed.