US manufacturer of microcontrollers, microprocessors and semiconductors Freescale and INSIDE Secure, a US provider of semiconductor solutions for secure transactions, have entered an agreement to launch a secure prepaid utility meter reference design with near field communication (NFC) connectivity to enable secure purchases and reload of energy credit balance using smart phones or contactless smart cards.

The reference design features INSIDE Secure’s VaultIC 460 and NFC chipset. The VaultIC 460 security module provides security functions such as mutual authentication, verification and generation of certificates, encryption/decryption and managing secure storage of cryptographic keys. It is FIPS140-2 Level 3 ready. NFC connectivity is implemented using the MicroRead controller and Open NFC protocol stack. The system is powered by the Freescale MK30X256 32-bit MCU and is based on Freescale’s MQX operating system.

In recent news, INSIDE Secure has enabled its NFC services to interact with the Kovio RF Barcode wireless tag, an NFC tag service based on Kovio’s printed silicon technology platform.