Blog

January update

February 1st, 2019

Welcome to the first Fidesmo monthly update focusing on events and insights from January 2019. These monthly updates will be written by me, Mattias Eld, CEO and co-founder of Fidesmo, to give you an insight into the company and the Fidesmo team.

So, let’s summarise the first month of 2019 – January!

After a short holiday break, we were back at the office to continue working with the Mastercard integration. We were eager to start the testing of the Fidesmo connected devices. We faced a lot of challenges – but with hard work comes progress, and results. We successfully tokenised payment cards onto wearables and went out performing tap and pay purchases all over Scandinavia. A huge milestone in Fidesmo’s history.

January also brought us a new collaboration, and we are happy to welcome the wearable company Invis Wearables to the Fidesmo family. We are looking forward to introducing payments and other contactless services into upcoming Invis products.

During 2018, we increased the Fidesmo team from 11 to 19 members, and we started 2019 by strengthening our team even further with two new members – Iván Rico and Nellie Granström. Iván Rico, Sales Manager Southern Europe, will make sure we meet the demand in southern Europe. Nellie Granström, Economy assistant and Office Manager, will be based at the Stockholm office and support our Head of Finance Lin Li.

My tip of the month is the Sparpodden episode “E-Kronans frammarsch” (in Swedish) together with Eva Juhlin, talking about the future of e-kronan. It is interesting to hear their vision of using IoT devices like watches and even implants as an integral part of their solution. Personally, I think that the Swedish e-krona initiative is going to be extremely interesting to follow, and it has a disruptive potential for the future Swedish payment landscape. Find the episode here.

2019 has really kick started and we will keep up the hard work for the rest of 2019 and forward. We are looking forward to what is to come, with new challenges, opportunities, hard work and progress – stay tuned!

Mattias Eld, CEO and co-founder
1/2 – 2019
mattias.eld@fidesmo.com

 

Fidesmo is taking on Southern Europe and opens sales office in Madrid

December 10th, 2018

 

Fidesmo now supports DESFire®!

August 30th, 2018

We are proud to announce a major addition to the functions offered by Fidesmo: MIFARE DESFire.
From now on, service providers using DESFire cards will be able to distribute remotely their services, via Fidesmo.
We have implemented it in a very simple way: we have added three operations to our public API (see https://developer.fidesmo.com/api),
– one to create a DESFire application on the Fidesmo-enabled device,
– a second one to delete it,
– and a third operation to send commands to the DESFire application: the same DESFire commands one would send to a reader communicating with a “traditional” DESFire card.
A somewhat longer technical description is available here: https://developer.fidesmo.com/documentation/desfire-implementation.

MIFARE DESFire is a technology widely used in the public transportation, access control, event ticketing, closed-loop payments and other industries. Supporting DESFire is a major step towards bringing contactless services to any device, anywhere. Of course, besides DESFire services, Fidesmo-enabled devices will continue to host services based on other technologies, sharing the same secure chip.

We will soon offer through our online store http://shop.fidesmo.com/ contactless cards with DESFire capabilities, so that anyone interested will be able to experience how simple it is to distribute existing, or fully new, DESFire applications to contactless devices.

NXP®, MIFARE, and DESFire® are registered trademarks of NXP B.V. and are used under license.

Why and how and you should protect your Facebook account

February 3rd, 2017

Last week Brad Hill, Security Engineer at Facebook, wrote a post. He recommends you to set up your online security with two-factor authentication (also referred to as login approvals) using a physical device. The reason for this two-factor authentication recommendation is because we are careless. Most people have their username and password stored on the[…] Read More

Fidesmo open sources APDU-over-Bluetooth protocol – Fidesmo devices are now reachable from any smartphone

November 18th, 2016

Last time we discussed the future wearable cloud, where the Fidesmo vision is that some important functions of the mobile phone can be distributed to a set of wearables. In order for this to work, we need to enable non-technology driven companies to integrate technology seamlessly into their devices, and the devices need to be[…] Read More

RIP! The phone is dead.

November 1st, 2016

A few weeks back there was an article where I was featured in Computer Sweden questioning whether or not the phone is the right medium for physical payments. There is no secret that Fidesmo supports the view that everything won’t be circling around the phone in the future, and I would like to take the[…] Read More

Securing KeePass databases with OTP codes generated on a Fidesmo device

June 3rd, 2016

Securing your KeePass 2.x password database with OTP codes generated from a seed safely kept on a Fidesmo device is really simple. We do however recommend that you have gone through our instructions on how to use basic OTP functions with your Fidesmo device before trying this. If you feel ready then read on! Warning[…] Read More

Fidesmo Android app v0.12.1

April 19th, 2016

Version 0.12.1 was supposed to be a small bug fix update. But when checking the changes that have happend since the last update it turned out to be quite a few. See the huge changelog below: Roll back usage of TagArbiter for now. Stop supporting NFC-less delivery Remove starting the app with NFC Stop supporting[…] Read More

Fidesmo Android app v0.12.0

February 22nd, 2016

Version 0.12.0 of the Fidesmo Android app is a big release that we have been working on for over a month. Lots of stuff have been going on behind the curtains and we have updated and refactored some of our own systems and tools. We have finally introduced the first UI testing in the Android[…] Read More

U2F via NFC on Android

January 7th, 2016

After an unusually warm but cozy Christmas we at Fidesmo are slowly getting back to full power. Besides presents (and a lot of good food) December brought with it several important announcements in the context of U2F and Android: Ledger FIDO U2F Our partner Ledger has released Ledger FIDO U2F on the Fidesmo platform! The[…] Read More

How to use the Fidesmo PGP applet to encrypt and sign emails in Android

November 12th, 2015

There are many good reasons to protect your email from prying eyes with encryption. There are also many reasons to ensure nobody can impersonate you by digitally signing your messages. PGP has been providing the tools to do both encryption and signing since 1991. This blog post, written as a tutorial, shows how to use it on the most popular[…] Read More

How to set up and use our secure One Time Password generator (updated)

August 20th, 2015

Note: this post is the updated version of this one. The recommended Android app to generate one-time passwords is now Yubico Authenticator. Passwords have been quite unpopular for a while. Every few weeks major news sites publish some variation on the “password is dead” topic. In order to improve login security, many of the leading[…] Read More

Why doesn’t Fidesmo use default ISD keys?

July 14th, 2015

We have been asked several times: how come Fidesmo Cards are personalized with secret ISD keys? If you want to be developer-friendly, why don’t you distribute them with the default ISD keys, so developers are able to install whatever they want? There are several reasons for that: It would decrease the system’s overall security Our[…] Read More

Fidesmo on the radio

July 6th, 2015

Two weeks ago, one of our co-founders was interviewed in Estartapeando, a space about the startup scene in Spain in Cadena SER’s Hora25 evening news programme. Cadena SER is the largest radio broadcasting network in Spain, so it was a pretty big thing for us. And being greeted by the fishmonger because he heard you on[…] Read More

Interested in a Fidesmo-enabled Yubikey?

June 22nd, 2015

Yubikey is a well known security device that generates one-time passwords, acting as a second authentication factor for secure log-in. There are USB-only and USB + NFC versions (the Yubikey NEO). They are used to login securely into Google, Facebook, GitHub, and to access corporate networks. Together with Yubico we have designed a Yubikey NEO[…] Read More

How to set up and use our secure One Time Password generator

April 8th, 2015

Note: now we recommend a different Android app to generate one-time passwords. See the updated instructions in this blog post. Passwords have been quite unpopular for a while. Every few weeks major news sites publish some variation on the “password is dead” topic. In order to improve login security, many of the leading online service providers[…] Read More

Important evolution of the Fidesmo platform

March 18th, 2015

Just a little bit more than 6 months ago we shipped our first development Fidesmo Card, and our platform has since then undergone a massive development. We have implemented support for Java Card. The Fidesmo App has evolved from being just two lines of very user unfriendly text input, to an embryo of a cardapp[…] Read More

The Higher Education Smart Campus Association (HESCA) meeting in Warwick

February 23rd, 2015

Both the two main Fidesmo propositions – use your mobile phone to interact with your Fidesmo card and use one card everywhere – rhymes very well with university use cases. In particular, the university is in most cases part of an extended ecosystem including for instance public transport ticketing, loyalty, ID and closed loop payments.[…] Read More

Java Card applications on the Fidesmo Card

August 26th, 2014

by Yves Bringing the “smart” to the smart card, we now allow not only the storage of MIFARE tickets on the Fidesmo Card, but also the installation of Java Card applets. These applets are programmed in a reduced version of the Java programming language and are directly executed on the card, while it is powered[…] Read More

Fidesmo in New York

May 19th, 2014

Working for a start-up sometimes require some travelling. This time it was mine and Mattias’ turn. The destination: New York! Why? To present at TechCrunch Disrupt. If you are curious about the event you can read more about it here. We found a nice hotel on Manhattan not too far away from the venue where[…] Read More

Our new branding

April 28th, 2014

The first thing we did when we started Fidesmo was to create a logo at 99designs, and you can read more about that here. A year later and a long creative process regarding what our offering will be, it is now time to update our logo and corporate profile to better reflect the company and[…] Read More

Service Delivery API is now available on developer.fidesmo.com

April 23rd, 2014

by Mattias As was previously discussed in our roadmap the Service Delivery API would be our next release, and we are now happy to announce that it is fully supported on developer.fidesmo.com, in the Fidesmo Backend server as well as in the Fidesmo App. With the Service Delivery API you as a developer can tie[…] Read More

We love cloud services

April 15th, 2014

by Miguel At Fidesmo we are strong believers in cloud services, and we use them a lot. This blog post is a big thank you to all our suppliers! Squarespace, we love the simplicity you provide in bringing our website to life. Github, we love the way you make our development work flow. Travis CI,[…] Read More

Cards as the New Computing Platform

March 31st, 2014

by Mattias Over at avc.com, Fred Wilson is writing about the search for the next platform, spurred by the recent Oculus acquisition. Now, we can debate what a platform is – is it a software framework like facebook, instagram and twitter, or is it more the underlying computing platform, like desktop, cloud and mobile, or[…] Read More

The Fidesmo developer portal is open!

February 19th, 2014

by Mattias Today Fidesmo is opening up its developer portal with the Transceive API for interested beta developers! The Transceive API is the first building block of many, but it nevertheless gives the developer a hint of what is expected in the future. The API allows a Service Provider to send APDUs from a backend[…] Read More

New office (again)

December 11th, 2013

by Mattias Start-up life is very dynamic, and one of the things that is changing very often in the beginning is the office address. Fidesmo yesterday moved in to SUP46, our second office, and it feels great! SUP46 is a meeting place for start-ups, early stage investors and the tech-scene in general in Stockholm. It[…] Read More

Scala eXchange 2013

December 9th, 2013

by Petter As a part of developing our software architecture me (Petter) and Fredrik visited this years’ Scala eXchange. A lot of the software we use to develop our systems was discussed, and especially interesting for us were the talks about Akka (Jonas Bonér), Spray (Mathias Doenitz) and Scalatest (Bill Venners) since these packages form[…] Read More

We won!

November 22nd, 2013

Today we received a 300k SEK grant by Vinnova as part of their Vinn nu competition. Vinnova is Sweden government’s innovation agency. We were one of 21 selected companies out of 209 participating in the competition. The grant came in the form of a classical diploma and today was the price ceremony at Vinnova. It[…] Read More

Our APDU library is ready!

October 31st, 2013

by Petter After months of hard work, we are proud to announce that our APDU library has reached beta state, that is, it can be used to build program logic that interacts with a smart card, using of course APDU scripts. Although the library is by no means finished, its architecture and main processes are[…] Read More

Back in Stockholm…

October 28th, 2013

by Miguel Having worked with my co-founders for more than two years before creating Fidesmo, we have pretty much nailed down how to run a geographically-distributed team. But it is always good to meet in person, and sometimes even necessary: for example, to have a long architecture design session, review the company’s strategy, or simply[…] Read More

New office

August 27th, 2013

 by Mattias We have finally moved to our first office at Adlerbethsgatan 21 in Kristineberg in Stockholm. It feels good to finally meet everyday in a “neutral” place, not having to hang around in each others apartments. Plus that the location is nice next to the Fredhäll park where the sun is always shining! (At[…] Read More

Designing a business model top-down. Does it make sense?

July 11th, 2013

by Miguel Some weeks ago (18th June) GlobalPlatform organized a TSM seminar a few subway stops from where I live, hosted by the Spanish Royal Mint (“Real Casa de la Moneda”, no less). No, they didn’t let us see where they print those nice Euro notes. But the food was excellent. It was a busy[…] Read More

Tough requirements

July 5th, 2013

By Petter A core part of what we are doing at Fidesmo is related to implementing standards like Global Platform card specification, ISO 8825-1 or Mifare 4 Mobile. All these standards are fairly low level and are related to coding the data to be sent on the “wire”. The implementation of a low level standard[…] Read More

Fredrik says hi!

June 28th, 2013

by Fredrik Hi, I’m Fredrik and recently started working as a developer at Fidesmo. For someone who enjoys the startup climate and loves working on technical challenges, Fidesmo has shown to be an excellent place to work during the last three weeks. Most recently, I have worked as technical lead for the startup company evisto[…] Read More

Future Perfect triggers thoughts…

June 4th, 2013

By Mattias A few weeks back I wrote a short blog post regarding why we started Fidesmo. There I mentioned that we want to break down the barriers for NFC by providing software and connectivity in an Internet-fashion. A few days ago I then read “Future Perfect” by Steven Johnson (an all in all very[…] Read More

Are we disruptive?

May 27th, 2013

By Miguel This is the promised follow-up to ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ review, applying the book’s analysis to our own case. It could be presented as one of Clayton Christensen’s examples: a technology industry, the smartcard industry, facing a technology change: the migration from plastic cards to ‘virtual cards’ pushed to users’ mobile phones. This industry[…] Read More

On Disruptive Technologies

May 20th, 2013

By Miguel A few years ago, while working at a big company in a pure technical position, I got this recommendation: “read this, it is not the typical book for Dilbert-esque managers”. I don’t remember who recommended it to me, probably it was my own manager at the time (not “Dilbert-esque” at all); the case[…] Read More

Stockholm start-up city!

April 26th, 2013

By Mattias The last week and a half has been busy for people attending start-up events in Stockholm, including myself. First, on Tuesday last week, there was 33-listan, which is an event to celebrate the 33 most promising young companies in Sweden. On Saturday there was Start-Up Day 2013 (SUD13 for short), and finally Wednesday[…] Read More

Why we started Fidesmo

April 8th, 2013

By Mattias One of the first questions people ask you when you say you have started a company: why did you do it? In our case, a lot of the people we know are also from the industry, and then the question might be something like: how are you going to make a difference, there[…] Read More

How we got our logo

March 31st, 2013

by Miguel Designing a website, writing down some content, setting up a Twitter account are some of the activities most startups nowadays have to do, while chasing investors and coding our magic (more about that in our technology section). We even have ordered some visit cards, God have mercy of our souls. All those things[…] Read More