YouTransactor YTSECPCI system-on-chip for mobile payment terminals

STMicroelectronics and YouTransactor have developed the YTSECPCI — a PCI secure system-on-chip (SoC) for mobile payment terminals based on a general-purpose microcontroller for robust performance and low power.

As a fully integrated SoC with a PCI (payment card industry) kernel, the device embeds all the physical security mechanisms required by PCI PTS (pin transaction security) to ensure the safety of transactions and user data. These include mesh monitoring, switch monitoring, support for secure application loading and secure boot, advanced cryptographic libraries, active software and hardware tamper detection with data-erase, card-data and pin-code protection, key management and real-time clock (RTC) integrity protection.

The chip leverages the advanced features and ultralow-power technologies of ST’s STM32L4 microcontrollers. Highlights of the MCU include 100 DMIPS/273 CoreMark processing performance, multiple power-management modes to help minimise overall energy consumption, large on-chip data and program memory, and ST’s Chrom-ART Accelerator to handle sophisticated user-interface graphics. In addition, engineering teams benefit from the STM32 development ecosystem, including initialisation tools, free essential middleware and software, and graphical development tools available through the ST Partner program.

Contact and contactless payment modes are all supported, and the chip comes pre-certified to PCI specifications to ease final approval of customers’ products. In addition to mobile point-of-sale (POS) terminals, the SoC can also be integrated in devices such as vending machines, IoT, cash registers, smartphones or retail hardware.