- Email: [email protected]
Marks & Spencer aims for ‘&more’
news
in brief • Koolspan has launched a device that can plug into the USB port of a computer to enable businesses to secure their Wi-Fi communications. Koolspan SecurEdge uses a lock-and-key approach to securing Wi-Fi. Users plug a smartcard-based physical token into a USB port on their laptop or other computing device. This token enables secure communications by connecting to a Koolspan “lock” located inside the network. Using this connection, the device can automatically verify and authenticate approved users who are accessing any Wi-Fi network, either public or private, the supplier claims. Koolspan-secured Wi-Fi transmissions undergo high-speed 256-bit AES encryption. The product, as well as OEM and vertical market applications, will be commercially available starting in the first quarter of 2004. Pricing is yet to be determined. • Philadelphia’s Parking Authority has rolled out a smart card for use at all of the city’s 14,500 parking meters. Philadelphians will be able to purchase a preloaded ‘memory’ smart card with US$20 of credit from various outlets. The initial aim of the scheme is to make it easier to park in the city, eliminating the need for people to use quarters to feed the meter. However, longer term the Authority would like to have a card that could also be used to pay for transit fares and highway tolls. An initial 60,000 cards have been purchased by the Authority from French smart card manufacturer Gemplus. The card should enable the city to pay back the cost of the cards (believed to be under US$1) by reducing coinhandling costs and increasing revenue. • Almost half of UK cardholders will be using chip and PIN technology at the point of sale by spring 2004, following the launch of the national roll out of the payments scheme. Meanwhile one in five cardholders are expected to be using the smart cards by Christmas and 90% by the end of 2004. As well as the smart cards, point-of-sale terminals and tills will also be upgraded to Chip and PIN. The UK’s Chip and PIN Programme expects 100,000 of the UK’s 550,000 tills to be switched to the new system by the end of 2003, with 440,000 tills upgraded by the end of next year. • Axalto, the smart card and terminals division of Schlumberger Ltd, has achieved MasterCard Level 1 and 2 Letter of Approval for Terminal Integration Process (TIP). According to Axalto, it is the first vendor in Asia Pacific to pass these stringent requirements. The certification is marked by the completion of an integrated EMV system for the Public Bank of Malaysia, which was implemented by Axalto’s local distributor Paysys.
4
previous quarter due to deliveries of high-end 64K and 128K cards, mainly in Italy, Brazil, Russia, Romania, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. Other card activities were also reported as being significant to the improving financial picture. These were driven by shipments to the banking sector (with conversion to the EMV standard in the UK), strong e-purse deliveries in Malaysia, robust pay-TV shipments in the USA, and high volumes of phone cards and scratch cards in China and Mexico. Schlumberger also commented on its recent announcement to dispose of the majority of its SchlumbergerSema business to Atos Origin. The company said it was “a major step in our strategy of refocusing Schlumberger on our core business of technical services and reservoir solutions to the upstream oil and gas industry”. The SchlumbergerSema operation had an operating revenue of US$792 million in the third quarter, which was 6% lower sequentially but 6% higher year-on-year. The activities to be transferred to Atos Origin, meanwhile, created US$633 million in revenue in the third quarter and had a pretax operating income of US$17 million. Overall Schlumberger reported third quarter operating revenue of US$3.51 billion versus US$3.39 billion in 2002.
statistics
Card production breaks 10 billion New statistics have revealed that the total number of plastic cards manufactured worldwide in 2002 hit 10.7 billion, just over 10% more than in 2001, when 9.7 billion cards were produced. This rise wasn’t reflected in the revenue picture, however, as extreme price pressure in 2002 meant that the market rose by just US$100 million from US$4.7 billion in 2001 to US$4.8 billion. The figures, produced by the International Card Manufacturers Association, include plastic cards of all thicknesses, including traditional cards with and without magnetic stripe, and chip cards that include contact, contactless and combi-cards. In terms of market share, Europe led the way when it comes to the amount of revenue created – coming in at US$1.84 billion in 2002. This is three times the size of the US market which reached US$636 million, despite the USA being streets ahead in terms of card volumes (52.2% of the market). High revenues in Europe reflect the large percentage of more expensive smart cards produced in the region. In fact traditional cards, while representing 83.6% of the total number of
units sold, represent just 25% of the dollars, while smart cards represent 16.4% of the total number of units sold and 75% of the dollars. Despite its strong revenue position, Europe actually suffered a setback compared with 2001. Pricing pressure meant that the US$2.04 billion market in 2001 decreased to US$1.84 billion in 2002. Meanwhile, smart card manufacturing fell 8% in the region. Looking ahead the survey’s authors remain upbeat. They predicted that: •
•
•
•
•
continued price pressure will lower average unit selling prices attributed to global deflation and industry overcapacity; the global dollar market will grow as higher priced microprocessor chip cards continue to penetrate and gain share over lower priced traditional cards; the financial hologram market should exhibit strong growth throughout 2002 as it continues to convert to chip cards; non-secure cards will also exhibit continued robust growth that will be attributed to gift cards and loyalty programmes; the Asia/Pacific market will continue at more than a 20% growth rate as China adapts to plastic cards.
Contact: Lynn McCullough at ICMA, Tel: +1 609 799 4900, email: [email protected]
credit card
Marks & Spencer aims for ‘&more’ One of the UK’s best known department stores Marks & Spencer (M&S) has launched a new credit card, in a roll out that is set to become the largest ever credit card launch in Europe. The MasterCard branded &more card will also have an associated loyalty scheme, which the store hopes will entice customers to use the card both in the store and elsewhere. The new cards will support the international EMV standard as part of the UK’s chip-and-PIN programme for credit and debit smart cards. However, the PIN will not be activated until the retailer rolls out chip-and-PIN compliant POS terminals. Prior to the national roll-out, M&S completed a pilot phase in nine stores in South Wales with 40,000 holders of the company’s private label charge card migrating to the new credit card. According to M&S, the product led to increases in spend and balances and an immediate affinity to the loyalty scheme. The &more cards have a generous loyalty scheme, which allows customers to accrue loyalty points at a rate of 1 point per British
Card Technology Today November/December 2003
news pound spent in-store and 1 point per £2 spent at other merchants in the UK and across the world. They will be able to redeem the points for Marks & Spencer vouchers. In the first instance, the loyalty programme will not operate via the card’s chip, but this could change in the future. The card will also come with 55 days interestfree credit on purchases and an interest rate of 14.9% APR. Alongside the credit card launch, Marks & Spencer Financial Services is being re-branded as Marks & Spencer Money. By the end of 2003, it expects to be the 7th largest credit card issuer in the UK. M&S Financial Services had been undergoing a period of stagnation as the unit reported a 6% drop in revenue to £329.9 million in the fiscal year ending 31 March. Meanwhile, the number of active accounts also dropped by more than 8% and the proportion of sales made on its own charge card fell by around 17%. Charge cardholders are not obliged to have the new credit card, but they will not have to undergo further credit checks if they decide to opt for the card. Contact: Louise Herbert at MasterCard, Tel: +32 2 352 5647, email: [email protected]
sim
USA embraces SIM technology Just three years ago SIM cards were present in less than 6% of the USA’s mobile phones. Today that figure has jumped to approximately 20%, representing more than 30 million US residents. The number of SIM-enabled phones is also growing at an impressive rate, thanks to their adoption by various operators, including AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless. Smart card technology has traditionally been alien to most US citizens, with Europe taking the lead in most smart card developments. However, in recent years the US government has shown the way through various smart card based implementations, such as the DoD’s Common Access Card programme, and now the SIM card is also making its mark. Not that the average US citizen recognizes that fact. SIM cards are only recognized by 39% of US mobile phone users, while only 20% understand that SIM cards are smart cards. These trends were revealed in the US SIM Card Consumer Survey by smart card manufacturer Gemplus, and shows the US is now proving to be a key market for SIM card manufacturers.
Card Technology Today November/December 2003
multiapplication
in brief
1MB card announced by NTT A smart card with a memory capacity of 1MB and that complies with GlobalPlatform V2.1 specifications has been announced by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). According to NTT, because the card offers more memory than most existing GlobalPlatform cards, it enables the installation of several times more application programs, as well as storage of volumes of data, such as fingerprints and other biometric information. Earlier GlobalPlatform cards did not have enough memory for applications in nonfinancial fields to be installed, NTT claims. The capacity of the new card will enable GlobalPlatform cards to be used in fields outside of the financial field; in particular in sectors that emphasize speed and contactless operation, such as electronic tickets, electronic money and building entry management cards. The card also offers a number of features, such as contact and contactless interfaces (ISO7816 contact-type and ISO14443 Type B contactless interfaces) and execution functions for programs created in the computing language C. (Programs described in C are converted by a C compiler into code that can be directly executed by the CPU, making it more suitable for high-speed processing than programming languages that are converted into an intermediate code, such as Java.) The high-capacity smart card will have more than 300 kilobytes of memory available for the storage of downloaded application programs. The card can also store over 100 kilobytes of biometrics authentication data at the same time, the supplier claims.
transport
Smart flexible cars in LA A new smart-card-based car hire scheme in Los Angeles could be the answer for people who find themselves without a ride to and from work, or who are sick of transit strikes and the lack of car park spaces in the city. Flexcar has more than 25 vehicles parked throughout downtown LA, Pasadena, Burbank, Santa Monica and Long Beach that are available for hourly or daily use by members. Each car comes with its own reserved parking spot. Petrol, insurance, servicing and the parking costs are included in Flexcar’s hourly rates, which begin at US$10 – or around US$50 per day. Members can reserve the vehicles when they need one, accessing them via a smart card. An
• US integrator Interlink has implemented a smart-card-based logical access control and ID solution at Denver Health in order to meet the hospital’s urgent need to comply with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulations. The project, which was completed in less than three weeks, will enable Denver Health employees to use a single card to authenticate themselves to the network. Upon inserting the smart card in a computer terminal, users are authenticated against the hospital’s Microsoft Active Directory account repository and have complete access to the applications and resources they need to do their job. Smart card manufacturer Gemplus provided the hardware for the project. • French smart card manufacturer Gemplus International and TOGEWAnet have launched WeRoam Enterprise Secure, a product designed to provide access to Public WLAN using smart cards and client software. The solution is targeted at the enterprise market. Alex Mandl, CEO, Gemplus, said: “WeRoam Enterprise Secure…demonstrates how one card can manage the authentication to both the wireless network and the enterprise intranet. It promotes security for enterprises whose employees are often working away and is a new direction for the SIM.” • UK developer of real-time indoor tracking systems, Ubisense, has become one of the first companies to demonstrate a tangible product based on ultrawideband (UWB) technology. The system implements a Ubisense ‘location cell’, while multiple location tags, called Ubitags, are tracked in real time and their positions are displayed on a map as they move around. The system enables 3D real-time tracking down to an accuracy of 6 inches (15 cm). At present a single cell is being demonstrated, although the company says the system has been designed to scale so that it can cover an entire office building, hospital or industrial plant. The system has been shown to work at distances of over 50 m, albeit with a slightly reduced accuracy. The product is set to be launched in the first quarter of 2004. • UbiQ has joined the Visa Smart Breakthrough Turnkey Personalisation Programme in a bid to improve the business case for smart cards. Visa International and UbiQ will work together to provide Visa member banks with a turnkey smart card personalisation package that streamlines the EMV migration process. Card personalisation occurs at the end of the manufacturing process when information, specific to each cardholder, is loaded onto the smart card. The new solution is designed for member banks seeking to control the personalisation process in-house.
5
in brief • Koolspan has launched a device that can plug into the USB port of a computer to enable businesses to secure their Wi-Fi communications. Koolspan SecurEdge uses a lock-and-key approach to securing Wi-Fi. Users plug a smartcard-based physical token into a USB port on their laptop or other computing device. This token enables secure communications by connecting to a Koolspan “lock” located inside the network. Using this connection, the device can automatically verify and authenticate approved users who are accessing any Wi-Fi network, either public or private, the supplier claims. Koolspan-secured Wi-Fi transmissions undergo high-speed 256-bit AES encryption. The product, as well as OEM and vertical market applications, will be commercially available starting in the first quarter of 2004. Pricing is yet to be determined. • Philadelphia’s Parking Authority has rolled out a smart card for use at all of the city’s 14,500 parking meters. Philadelphians will be able to purchase a preloaded ‘memory’ smart card with US$20 of credit from various outlets. The initial aim of the scheme is to make it easier to park in the city, eliminating the need for people to use quarters to feed the meter. However, longer term the Authority would like to have a card that could also be used to pay for transit fares and highway tolls. An initial 60,000 cards have been purchased by the Authority from French smart card manufacturer Gemplus. The card should enable the city to pay back the cost of the cards (believed to be under US$1) by reducing coinhandling costs and increasing revenue. • Almost half of UK cardholders will be using chip and PIN technology at the point of sale by spring 2004, following the launch of the national roll out of the payments scheme. Meanwhile one in five cardholders are expected to be using the smart cards by Christmas and 90% by the end of 2004. As well as the smart cards, point-of-sale terminals and tills will also be upgraded to Chip and PIN. The UK’s Chip and PIN Programme expects 100,000 of the UK’s 550,000 tills to be switched to the new system by the end of 2003, with 440,000 tills upgraded by the end of next year. • Axalto, the smart card and terminals division of Schlumberger Ltd, has achieved MasterCard Level 1 and 2 Letter of Approval for Terminal Integration Process (TIP). According to Axalto, it is the first vendor in Asia Pacific to pass these stringent requirements. The certification is marked by the completion of an integrated EMV system for the Public Bank of Malaysia, which was implemented by Axalto’s local distributor Paysys.
4
previous quarter due to deliveries of high-end 64K and 128K cards, mainly in Italy, Brazil, Russia, Romania, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. Other card activities were also reported as being significant to the improving financial picture. These were driven by shipments to the banking sector (with conversion to the EMV standard in the UK), strong e-purse deliveries in Malaysia, robust pay-TV shipments in the USA, and high volumes of phone cards and scratch cards in China and Mexico. Schlumberger also commented on its recent announcement to dispose of the majority of its SchlumbergerSema business to Atos Origin. The company said it was “a major step in our strategy of refocusing Schlumberger on our core business of technical services and reservoir solutions to the upstream oil and gas industry”. The SchlumbergerSema operation had an operating revenue of US$792 million in the third quarter, which was 6% lower sequentially but 6% higher year-on-year. The activities to be transferred to Atos Origin, meanwhile, created US$633 million in revenue in the third quarter and had a pretax operating income of US$17 million. Overall Schlumberger reported third quarter operating revenue of US$3.51 billion versus US$3.39 billion in 2002.
statistics
Card production breaks 10 billion New statistics have revealed that the total number of plastic cards manufactured worldwide in 2002 hit 10.7 billion, just over 10% more than in 2001, when 9.7 billion cards were produced. This rise wasn’t reflected in the revenue picture, however, as extreme price pressure in 2002 meant that the market rose by just US$100 million from US$4.7 billion in 2001 to US$4.8 billion. The figures, produced by the International Card Manufacturers Association, include plastic cards of all thicknesses, including traditional cards with and without magnetic stripe, and chip cards that include contact, contactless and combi-cards. In terms of market share, Europe led the way when it comes to the amount of revenue created – coming in at US$1.84 billion in 2002. This is three times the size of the US market which reached US$636 million, despite the USA being streets ahead in terms of card volumes (52.2% of the market). High revenues in Europe reflect the large percentage of more expensive smart cards produced in the region. In fact traditional cards, while representing 83.6% of the total number of
units sold, represent just 25% of the dollars, while smart cards represent 16.4% of the total number of units sold and 75% of the dollars. Despite its strong revenue position, Europe actually suffered a setback compared with 2001. Pricing pressure meant that the US$2.04 billion market in 2001 decreased to US$1.84 billion in 2002. Meanwhile, smart card manufacturing fell 8% in the region. Looking ahead the survey’s authors remain upbeat. They predicted that: •
•
•
•
•
continued price pressure will lower average unit selling prices attributed to global deflation and industry overcapacity; the global dollar market will grow as higher priced microprocessor chip cards continue to penetrate and gain share over lower priced traditional cards; the financial hologram market should exhibit strong growth throughout 2002 as it continues to convert to chip cards; non-secure cards will also exhibit continued robust growth that will be attributed to gift cards and loyalty programmes; the Asia/Pacific market will continue at more than a 20% growth rate as China adapts to plastic cards.
Contact: Lynn McCullough at ICMA, Tel: +1 609 799 4900, email: [email protected]
credit card
Marks & Spencer aims for ‘&more’ One of the UK’s best known department stores Marks & Spencer (M&S) has launched a new credit card, in a roll out that is set to become the largest ever credit card launch in Europe. The MasterCard branded &more card will also have an associated loyalty scheme, which the store hopes will entice customers to use the card both in the store and elsewhere. The new cards will support the international EMV standard as part of the UK’s chip-and-PIN programme for credit and debit smart cards. However, the PIN will not be activated until the retailer rolls out chip-and-PIN compliant POS terminals. Prior to the national roll-out, M&S completed a pilot phase in nine stores in South Wales with 40,000 holders of the company’s private label charge card migrating to the new credit card. According to M&S, the product led to increases in spend and balances and an immediate affinity to the loyalty scheme. The &more cards have a generous loyalty scheme, which allows customers to accrue loyalty points at a rate of 1 point per British
Card Technology Today November/December 2003
news pound spent in-store and 1 point per £2 spent at other merchants in the UK and across the world. They will be able to redeem the points for Marks & Spencer vouchers. In the first instance, the loyalty programme will not operate via the card’s chip, but this could change in the future. The card will also come with 55 days interestfree credit on purchases and an interest rate of 14.9% APR. Alongside the credit card launch, Marks & Spencer Financial Services is being re-branded as Marks & Spencer Money. By the end of 2003, it expects to be the 7th largest credit card issuer in the UK. M&S Financial Services had been undergoing a period of stagnation as the unit reported a 6% drop in revenue to £329.9 million in the fiscal year ending 31 March. Meanwhile, the number of active accounts also dropped by more than 8% and the proportion of sales made on its own charge card fell by around 17%. Charge cardholders are not obliged to have the new credit card, but they will not have to undergo further credit checks if they decide to opt for the card. Contact: Louise Herbert at MasterCard, Tel: +32 2 352 5647, email: [email protected]
sim
USA embraces SIM technology Just three years ago SIM cards were present in less than 6% of the USA’s mobile phones. Today that figure has jumped to approximately 20%, representing more than 30 million US residents. The number of SIM-enabled phones is also growing at an impressive rate, thanks to their adoption by various operators, including AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless. Smart card technology has traditionally been alien to most US citizens, with Europe taking the lead in most smart card developments. However, in recent years the US government has shown the way through various smart card based implementations, such as the DoD’s Common Access Card programme, and now the SIM card is also making its mark. Not that the average US citizen recognizes that fact. SIM cards are only recognized by 39% of US mobile phone users, while only 20% understand that SIM cards are smart cards. These trends were revealed in the US SIM Card Consumer Survey by smart card manufacturer Gemplus, and shows the US is now proving to be a key market for SIM card manufacturers.
Card Technology Today November/December 2003
multiapplication
in brief
1MB card announced by NTT A smart card with a memory capacity of 1MB and that complies with GlobalPlatform V2.1 specifications has been announced by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). According to NTT, because the card offers more memory than most existing GlobalPlatform cards, it enables the installation of several times more application programs, as well as storage of volumes of data, such as fingerprints and other biometric information. Earlier GlobalPlatform cards did not have enough memory for applications in nonfinancial fields to be installed, NTT claims. The capacity of the new card will enable GlobalPlatform cards to be used in fields outside of the financial field; in particular in sectors that emphasize speed and contactless operation, such as electronic tickets, electronic money and building entry management cards. The card also offers a number of features, such as contact and contactless interfaces (ISO7816 contact-type and ISO14443 Type B contactless interfaces) and execution functions for programs created in the computing language C. (Programs described in C are converted by a C compiler into code that can be directly executed by the CPU, making it more suitable for high-speed processing than programming languages that are converted into an intermediate code, such as Java.) The high-capacity smart card will have more than 300 kilobytes of memory available for the storage of downloaded application programs. The card can also store over 100 kilobytes of biometrics authentication data at the same time, the supplier claims.
transport
Smart flexible cars in LA A new smart-card-based car hire scheme in Los Angeles could be the answer for people who find themselves without a ride to and from work, or who are sick of transit strikes and the lack of car park spaces in the city. Flexcar has more than 25 vehicles parked throughout downtown LA, Pasadena, Burbank, Santa Monica and Long Beach that are available for hourly or daily use by members. Each car comes with its own reserved parking spot. Petrol, insurance, servicing and the parking costs are included in Flexcar’s hourly rates, which begin at US$10 – or around US$50 per day. Members can reserve the vehicles when they need one, accessing them via a smart card. An
• US integrator Interlink has implemented a smart-card-based logical access control and ID solution at Denver Health in order to meet the hospital’s urgent need to comply with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulations. The project, which was completed in less than three weeks, will enable Denver Health employees to use a single card to authenticate themselves to the network. Upon inserting the smart card in a computer terminal, users are authenticated against the hospital’s Microsoft Active Directory account repository and have complete access to the applications and resources they need to do their job. Smart card manufacturer Gemplus provided the hardware for the project. • French smart card manufacturer Gemplus International and TOGEWAnet have launched WeRoam Enterprise Secure, a product designed to provide access to Public WLAN using smart cards and client software. The solution is targeted at the enterprise market. Alex Mandl, CEO, Gemplus, said: “WeRoam Enterprise Secure…demonstrates how one card can manage the authentication to both the wireless network and the enterprise intranet. It promotes security for enterprises whose employees are often working away and is a new direction for the SIM.” • UK developer of real-time indoor tracking systems, Ubisense, has become one of the first companies to demonstrate a tangible product based on ultrawideband (UWB) technology. The system implements a Ubisense ‘location cell’, while multiple location tags, called Ubitags, are tracked in real time and their positions are displayed on a map as they move around. The system enables 3D real-time tracking down to an accuracy of 6 inches (15 cm). At present a single cell is being demonstrated, although the company says the system has been designed to scale so that it can cover an entire office building, hospital or industrial plant. The system has been shown to work at distances of over 50 m, albeit with a slightly reduced accuracy. The product is set to be launched in the first quarter of 2004. • UbiQ has joined the Visa Smart Breakthrough Turnkey Personalisation Programme in a bid to improve the business case for smart cards. Visa International and UbiQ will work together to provide Visa member banks with a turnkey smart card personalisation package that streamlines the EMV migration process. Card personalisation occurs at the end of the manufacturing process when information, specific to each cardholder, is loaded onto the smart card. The new solution is designed for member banks seeking to control the personalisation process in-house.
5