“Yes, that’s right, to implement mobile wallet for access control you’ll need to send someone out to each reader, power cycle it, connect via Bluetooth, upgrade its firmware, and then configure it with a new encryption key and Apple TCI value.“
That’s a real conversation with a real customer!
In today’s world, it’s surprisingly hard to update or re-configure some NFC readers once they’ve been installed in the field. It’s fine for one building with a dozen readers on the periphery. It can be challenging and costly if you have dozens of buildings and hundreds or thousands of doors.
Some popular access control manufacturers have finally woken up to this challenge, but are only offering updates via just a few proprietary control panels and software providers. Nearly everyone else must be next to a reader and use special cards, apps or cables to update it.
Some vertically integrated providers have a better story because they’re in control of their entire stack and updates can be pushed from their cloud. But in general, the industry needs to work out better ways to deploy new technology at the door, both now and in the future.
Easy updates for access control
Access control used to be ‘set-and-forget’ and then ‘beep-click’ for 10 years. Now, developments in secure identity mean that in a few years’ time we may be using completely different digital credentials to prove we can go through a door or gate.
The infrastructure we install now needs to be as open, flexible and easily updatable as possible, otherwise we’ll be visiting those sites again, either to update or replace all those readers, again.
At Dot Origin we’ve been building new NFC solutions that reflect what happened in other fast-evolving industries like payments and IT security. Readers that can send taps to one cloud while being securely managed by another. Wallet readers where you can update firmware and keys without an SDK or proprietary tools. And NFC readers that read many types of credential rather than locking you in to just one.
Now that, to us, makes more sense than sending people out into the field every time something changes.
We can’t always manage it – some legacy systems are inherently one-way – but we have a clear vision of how access control will evolve as a software-driven business and we’re building a portfolio of boxed NFC readers and embedded reader modules to suit every situation.
Another real conversation with a customer using VTAP for access control:
Customers: “It can be that easy?”
“We’ve seen an occasional bug occur at some of our sites” – “Ok, here’s a new firmware that adds some extra diagnostics” – “Thanks, we’ve rolled that out to some of our sites and rolled back the others to an earlier firmware while we pin it down..”
Simple. Oh, did we mention that they have over 5000 sites, 9000 readers and 5M users?!
Success with mobile wallet starts with a simple, swift and secure tap. Choose your NFC hardware carefully and ask your potential partner a few challenging questions before signing up.