Under the terms of the agreement, Sony will engage Blackboard to support the FeliCa contactless chip technology. The combination of Sonys proven FeliCa technology and the industry standard Near Field Communication (NFC) protocol offers industry-leading application options and system performance.

"The deployment of contactless technology is very advanced across Asia where Sony is the clear market leader," said Russ Carlson, President of the Blackboard Commerce Group. "Sonys commitment to the U.S. market and to NFC standards allows for a solution to higher education institutions that improves student service in a cost effective manner, and enables a wide-array of new services in the future."

The FeliCa Contactless IC card technology offers high security complying with ISO standard in contactless applications. FeliCa also provides a supportive layer of user credentials which can be integrated with NFC-enabled devices including door access readers, point of sale terminals, mobile phones and a variety of attended and unattended devices.

"Our collaboration will help improve the daily life of students, staff and faculty with the benefits of FeliCa contactless technology as it allows educational institutions to combine multiple applications including student identification, access control and payment onto a single card," said Hiromasa Otsuka, Corporate Executive Senior Vice President at Sony Corporation responsible for the FeliCa Division. "We are ready and excited to expand the cool and smart lifestyle FeliCa technology enabled in Japan to the U.S. market."

Sony FeliCa technology is widely used across the globe, with more than 250 million cards and FeliCa chips embedded in mobile phones in circulation. Rail ticketing and payment systems throughout Asia have incorporated the contactless technology to increase speed of service and passenger throughput.

With Sonys FeliCa technology, contactless communication between the card and the card reader/writer is activated by electromagnetic waves radiated from the reader/writer antenna. FeliCa technology complies with ISO/IEC 18092 communication method. The solution allows for read/write transactions to be completed within 0.1 second, a feature that makes the card advantageous to be used for multiple university campus applications that require high-speed processing.

Transmission data is encrypted using a "transaction key" which is dynamically generated at every mutual authentication. These features make forgery and card fraud nearly impossible.