Rivetz develops secure payment solution for Android to support Bitcoin

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, technology security firm Rivetz debuted a mobile solution for e-commerce transactions, leveraging the built-in hardware security already shipping on most commercial handsets.

According to a news release sent to CoinReport, Rivetz, in partnership with BitPay, demonstrated an easy-to-use, open-source payments technology compatible with any Trustonic-enabled smart device. The solution is compatible with thousands of Bitcoin merchants, offering consumers peace of mind that their Bitcoin transactions are private, safe, and secure. The news release said Rivetz’s solution meets all of the requirements of the recently implemented regulations for European payments using smart devices.

The Rivetz solution also leverages the Trustonic Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) built into millions of smart devices to provide the trusted execution space for storing and processing Bitcoin keys. The solution uses the Trusted User Interface for secure PIN entry secure display of users’ transaction details. Rivetz uses Intercede’s MyTAM™ cloud service to securely load the Bitcoin wallet into the TEE to protect the application and the data in accesses from threats that may be present on the handset.

Poised to be available in the second quarter of 2015, the Rivetz solution is compatible with more than 350 million existing Android-enabled devices.

Rivetz CEO Steven Sprague

In an interview with CoinReport, Rivetz CEO Steven Sprague said he has had personal relationships with folks at Trustonic prior to Trustonic’s foundation, so he is very pleased to be a partner with Trustonic, which he said is building a fantastic platform. Sprague said he also has a long-standing relationship with Intercede and welcomes the partnership to leverage its cloud solution. Sprague first approached BitPay with the idea of a trusted execution support at his first Bitcoin conference in Miami more than a year ago. Tony Gallippi, co-founder and executive chairman of BitPay, has been a strong supporter of Rivetz’s endeavors, Sprague said.

Response to the new solution has been quite positive. The project has attracted interest from several wallet providers, including Mycelium and Breadwallet, reported CoinDesk.

Sprague told CoinReport, “We have been approached by a number of additional interested parties. Rivetz is bringing world-class security to payment-support devices. We have been very pleased with the response and look forward to supporting a number of available solutions in the coming months.”

Sprague told CoinDesk that Bitcoin has a huge challenge, which is how to protect the private key. He told CoinReport that another challenge is scale. “Today, it is not a problem but the potential for mainstream adoption on mobile devices could drive growth to hundreds of millions of wallets, and this would certainly test the current assumptions about growth. We look forward to helping support and develop the solutions and paying our role in building a thriving global solution.”

Sprague said Bitcoin and the blockchain have offered an incredible platform for innovation.

“The market is just seeing the tip of the iceberg on what is possible from the mix of strong identity, multi-sig, smart contracts, and assured storage,” Sprague said, adding that “the marriage of trusted computing and Bitcoin will provide business with answers for everything from simple payment and the Internet of Things to high assurance industrial control and assured SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) networks.”

Great, simple use-cases will help Bitcoin and its underlying technology to grow in terms of consumer and business adoption, said Sprague.

“It is about building solutions, not just technology – building solutions that meet the financial inclusion needs of the unbanked and building solutions that improve the quality, speed and costs for the fully banked. I also believe that the range of applications which have nothing to do with finance but are all about helping users manage their data will ultimately prove to be the largest opportunities in the in the markets. We spend our lives with devices providing us data and storing our histories; Rivetz, Bitcoin and the blockchain will improve that model for everyone going forward.”

Images courtesy of Rivetz