- Email: [email protected]
MasterCard backs new technolgogies
News another 300 million units forecast to be delivered this year. Table Forecast of smart card deliveries for 2000 (Million units) Banking
Memory
Microprocessor
-
120
Health Care
30
35
Telecom
1030
300
Transport
50
8
Pay TV
-
35
IT (Internet ID)
-
15
Loyalty/retail
30
-
Others
35
50
Total
1175 (+14%)
563 (+42%)
Total all smart cards: 1.739 bn (+22%) Source: Eurosmart Commenting on the geographical breakdown of smart card deliveries, the Eurosmart secretariat points out that 63% of output in 1999 went to EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) with the remaining 37% going, in equal proportions, to Asia/Pacific and the Americas. Growth has been faster (up 27%) in the Americas than in Asia/Pacific (up 13.5%); this has been due to a rapid growth in the Central and South American markets. Contact: Florence Gras at Eurosmart, Tel: +32 2 506 88 68, e-mail: [email protected]
Card Futures
MasterCard backs new technolgogies MasterCard International has launched a US$50 million investment fund to take equity positions in IT companies in exchange for cash, brand value, operational support and other services. The fund will invest in ventures developing new products and services that can be used by the association’s member banks; but MasterCard will also be seeking significant financial returns. This will be an ’evergreen’ fund that will liquidate its holdings from time to time and then reinvest the cash. MasterCard has already ventured into taking equity positions in IT ventures, most notably through its holding in Mondex. A prime purpose of the fund is to expand the ways and places in which MasterCard products
4 • Ctt June 2000
are used – especially in such areas as smart cards, e-business and mobile commerce. MasterCard executives cite as a topic of research (carried out in this case with Trintech) the development of an e-wallet that will hold consumer data for use in e-commerce. Creation of the new fund follows a US$5 million grant to establish the MasterCard Future of Transactions Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory. The Transactions Laboratory is to work on remote devices used at the point of sale, on biometrics, on mobile devices used for accessing the Internet and on infra-red technology. While the Media Lab focuses directly on technology, MasterCard will also collaborate with MIT Sloan School of Management on such issues as: • Mobile shopping – exploring the use of personal devices. • Electronic exchanges – techniques for creating marketplaces where issues of quality and service can be taken into account. • Software agents – the automation of all or some of the steps of a remote transaction. • Profiling and privacy – storage of an e-profile and user control of data. • Trust, brand and reputation – the role of reputation in differentiating between merchants. Meanwhile the MIT Media Lab continues to explore aspects of the digital society. Areas of study include: electronic paper; ‘smart’ clothing; and ‘toys to think with’. The Media Lab operates on an annual budget of US$35 million, with 90% provided by corporate sponsors. MasterCard has also announced an update to its M/Chip debit/credit application. M/Chip enables member banks to issue chip cards conforming to the international EMV standards.The application is already available in two versions: M/Chip Lite, which runs on a variety of operating systems, and M/Chip Select for Multos, which runs on MasterCard’s Multos multi-application operating system. The new release (Version 2) is for M/Chip Select. It provides a range of controls for securing the use of the card: • Risk management – An in-built transaction counter enables the issuer to programme the card to go on-line for authorisation, when certain preset limits to the volume or value of transactions have been reached.
News Proton World Shareholders in Proton World are American Express, Banksys (Belgian banks), ERG (the Australian systems house), Interpay (Dutch banks) and Visa International. Proton World is currently implementing the CEPS standards in an attempt to bring about interoperability of electronic purse schemes worldwide. Proton-based smart card schemes have now performed 150 million transactions and the cards are accepted at 277,000 terminals around the world.
• At-risk card - An inbuilt blocking mechanism can be triggered at the point of sale, if the issuer suspects that the card is being used fraudulently. • Limited use – Cards can be programmed so that they can only be used within certain categories of merchants or transactions. • E-commerce security – M/Chip is now compliant with the Chip Electronic Commerce specification that describes how EMV cards can be used for payments over the Internet. Contact: Christina Costa at MasterCard International, Tel: +1 914 249 4606, e-mail: [email protected]
North American market
Proton World takes road show to major cities
Xiring Xiring was founded in 1998 to build and market smart card readers for the general public. A prime use is for the holders of e-purse cards to check their balances; Xiring readers are being used in the three French e-purse pilots (Moneo, Modeus and Mondex) and are being developed for the French banks’ Cyber-Comm ecommerce project. Worldwide, three million Xiring readers are now being used in 18 countries.
Proton World, the Brussels-based group whose smart card technology is in use or trial in 20 countries across the globe, is making a determined onslaught on the North American market. Following this year’s CardTech/SecurTech, a team from Proton World took a road show to potential partners and licensees in five North American cities - Washington DC, New York, Toronto, Dallas and San Francisco. In addition, the company is to open a North American sales office in Orlando, Florida. Graham Frost, deputy managing director of Proton World, said that the new office would consolidate the drive to make Proton technology better known in North America and would follow-up the “considerable number” of sales leads coming in from interested companies in the US, Canada, Central and South America. Proton World is actively seeking partners in North America. First major alliance is with ACI, the Omaha, Nebraska, company that has built an international business (with offices in 70 countries) supplying back office payment and card authorisation systems to some 2,500 banks worldwide. Proton World and ACI are to develop a joint product that will combine the Proton R4 ‘front-end’ smart card management management package with the ACI ‘back-end’ host system. The technical architecture of the new system will combine: the Proton CEPS-based electronic purse; the Proton World EMV-compliant debit/credit application; ACI’s EMV host software; the ACI back office payment system and any
additions requested by the customer. These additions could include Proton’s Card Application Life Cycle management system or ACI’s Monad card management system. Three licences for Proton technology have already been taken up in North America – by American Express (a worldwide licensee and founder shareholder in Proton World), the Pathways group and by a consortium of Canadian banks led by the Bank of Montreal. Graham Frost said: “We expect the North American market for smart cards to grow rapidly in the next two years, to catch up with the progress made in Europe; by making an early investment we expect Proton World to capture a large slice of this market. We see multi-application smart cards and the added security and confidence that smart cards bring to e-commerce as the major drivers of market growth.” Contact: Dominique Hautain at Proton World, Tel: +32 2 724 5111, e-mail: [email protected]
Home banking
New Xiring reader provides security in home banking Xiring, an associate of the French Bull group, has developed a line of pocket-sized card readers for verifying customer identity in home banking transactions. The novel feature of the new X-Sign product is that it uses features already present in the card’s chip, rather than in the reader, to provide secure access to the bank. The readers require no special connections and can be used anywhere. The idea is that banks which are already operating smart card systems - such as the Proton-based banks in Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere – can launch high-security home banking systems quickly and at low cost. In authentication mode, X-Sign readers can be used to verify the identity of the bearer of the card. When the card is inserted, the reader generates and displays an eleven digit number which the customer can then transmit to their bank. (For greater security, some readers will also verify a customer’s PIN code.) When the user of the card has been authenticated, the X-Sign reader enables the card’s bearer to prove that they are the author of the message and that the message has not been altered. To do
Ctt June 2000 • 5
Memory
Microprocessor
-
120
Health Care
30
35
Telecom
1030
300
Transport
50
8
Pay TV
-
35
IT (Internet ID)
-
15
Loyalty/retail
30
-
Others
35
50
Total
1175 (+14%)
563 (+42%)
Total all smart cards: 1.739 bn (+22%) Source: Eurosmart Commenting on the geographical breakdown of smart card deliveries, the Eurosmart secretariat points out that 63% of output in 1999 went to EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) with the remaining 37% going, in equal proportions, to Asia/Pacific and the Americas. Growth has been faster (up 27%) in the Americas than in Asia/Pacific (up 13.5%); this has been due to a rapid growth in the Central and South American markets. Contact: Florence Gras at Eurosmart, Tel: +32 2 506 88 68, e-mail: [email protected]
Card Futures
MasterCard backs new technolgogies MasterCard International has launched a US$50 million investment fund to take equity positions in IT companies in exchange for cash, brand value, operational support and other services. The fund will invest in ventures developing new products and services that can be used by the association’s member banks; but MasterCard will also be seeking significant financial returns. This will be an ’evergreen’ fund that will liquidate its holdings from time to time and then reinvest the cash. MasterCard has already ventured into taking equity positions in IT ventures, most notably through its holding in Mondex. A prime purpose of the fund is to expand the ways and places in which MasterCard products
4 • Ctt June 2000
are used – especially in such areas as smart cards, e-business and mobile commerce. MasterCard executives cite as a topic of research (carried out in this case with Trintech) the development of an e-wallet that will hold consumer data for use in e-commerce. Creation of the new fund follows a US$5 million grant to establish the MasterCard Future of Transactions Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory. The Transactions Laboratory is to work on remote devices used at the point of sale, on biometrics, on mobile devices used for accessing the Internet and on infra-red technology. While the Media Lab focuses directly on technology, MasterCard will also collaborate with MIT Sloan School of Management on such issues as: • Mobile shopping – exploring the use of personal devices. • Electronic exchanges – techniques for creating marketplaces where issues of quality and service can be taken into account. • Software agents – the automation of all or some of the steps of a remote transaction. • Profiling and privacy – storage of an e-profile and user control of data. • Trust, brand and reputation – the role of reputation in differentiating between merchants. Meanwhile the MIT Media Lab continues to explore aspects of the digital society. Areas of study include: electronic paper; ‘smart’ clothing; and ‘toys to think with’. The Media Lab operates on an annual budget of US$35 million, with 90% provided by corporate sponsors. MasterCard has also announced an update to its M/Chip debit/credit application. M/Chip enables member banks to issue chip cards conforming to the international EMV standards.The application is already available in two versions: M/Chip Lite, which runs on a variety of operating systems, and M/Chip Select for Multos, which runs on MasterCard’s Multos multi-application operating system. The new release (Version 2) is for M/Chip Select. It provides a range of controls for securing the use of the card: • Risk management – An in-built transaction counter enables the issuer to programme the card to go on-line for authorisation, when certain preset limits to the volume or value of transactions have been reached.
News Proton World Shareholders in Proton World are American Express, Banksys (Belgian banks), ERG (the Australian systems house), Interpay (Dutch banks) and Visa International. Proton World is currently implementing the CEPS standards in an attempt to bring about interoperability of electronic purse schemes worldwide. Proton-based smart card schemes have now performed 150 million transactions and the cards are accepted at 277,000 terminals around the world.
• At-risk card - An inbuilt blocking mechanism can be triggered at the point of sale, if the issuer suspects that the card is being used fraudulently. • Limited use – Cards can be programmed so that they can only be used within certain categories of merchants or transactions. • E-commerce security – M/Chip is now compliant with the Chip Electronic Commerce specification that describes how EMV cards can be used for payments over the Internet. Contact: Christina Costa at MasterCard International, Tel: +1 914 249 4606, e-mail: [email protected]
North American market
Proton World takes road show to major cities
Xiring Xiring was founded in 1998 to build and market smart card readers for the general public. A prime use is for the holders of e-purse cards to check their balances; Xiring readers are being used in the three French e-purse pilots (Moneo, Modeus and Mondex) and are being developed for the French banks’ Cyber-Comm ecommerce project. Worldwide, three million Xiring readers are now being used in 18 countries.
Proton World, the Brussels-based group whose smart card technology is in use or trial in 20 countries across the globe, is making a determined onslaught on the North American market. Following this year’s CardTech/SecurTech, a team from Proton World took a road show to potential partners and licensees in five North American cities - Washington DC, New York, Toronto, Dallas and San Francisco. In addition, the company is to open a North American sales office in Orlando, Florida. Graham Frost, deputy managing director of Proton World, said that the new office would consolidate the drive to make Proton technology better known in North America and would follow-up the “considerable number” of sales leads coming in from interested companies in the US, Canada, Central and South America. Proton World is actively seeking partners in North America. First major alliance is with ACI, the Omaha, Nebraska, company that has built an international business (with offices in 70 countries) supplying back office payment and card authorisation systems to some 2,500 banks worldwide. Proton World and ACI are to develop a joint product that will combine the Proton R4 ‘front-end’ smart card management management package with the ACI ‘back-end’ host system. The technical architecture of the new system will combine: the Proton CEPS-based electronic purse; the Proton World EMV-compliant debit/credit application; ACI’s EMV host software; the ACI back office payment system and any
additions requested by the customer. These additions could include Proton’s Card Application Life Cycle management system or ACI’s Monad card management system. Three licences for Proton technology have already been taken up in North America – by American Express (a worldwide licensee and founder shareholder in Proton World), the Pathways group and by a consortium of Canadian banks led by the Bank of Montreal. Graham Frost said: “We expect the North American market for smart cards to grow rapidly in the next two years, to catch up with the progress made in Europe; by making an early investment we expect Proton World to capture a large slice of this market. We see multi-application smart cards and the added security and confidence that smart cards bring to e-commerce as the major drivers of market growth.” Contact: Dominique Hautain at Proton World, Tel: +32 2 724 5111, e-mail: [email protected]
Home banking
New Xiring reader provides security in home banking Xiring, an associate of the French Bull group, has developed a line of pocket-sized card readers for verifying customer identity in home banking transactions. The novel feature of the new X-Sign product is that it uses features already present in the card’s chip, rather than in the reader, to provide secure access to the bank. The readers require no special connections and can be used anywhere. The idea is that banks which are already operating smart card systems - such as the Proton-based banks in Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere – can launch high-security home banking systems quickly and at low cost. In authentication mode, X-Sign readers can be used to verify the identity of the bearer of the card. When the card is inserted, the reader generates and displays an eleven digit number which the customer can then transmit to their bank. (For greater security, some readers will also verify a customer’s PIN code.) When the user of the card has been authenticated, the X-Sign reader enables the card’s bearer to prove that they are the author of the message and that the message has not been altered. To do
Ctt June 2000 • 5