news card unit reportedly falling by 8.5% to Euro 459.6 million. This result confirms the company’s third spot in the industry, with Gemplus and Axalto in the first and second places respectively, and Oberthur Card Systems and Orga Kartensysteme trailing in fourth and fifth place. The company put the fall in revenue primarily down to a drop in the average selling prices for smart cards. However, the performance was worse than any of the other four companies in the top five, two of which reported increases in revenues in 2003. G&D, which is also a producer of banknotes and other security papers, performed slightly better as a group, with revenue falling by 3.8% to Euro 1.05 billion (before currency adjustments). After adjustment, revenue was up by 4%. The encouraging figure was the group’s net income which was up by 20% to Euro 28. 2 million. According to Willi Berchtold, chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Giesecke & Devrient: “We are very satisfied with our performance in fiscal 2003, as it shows that we were able to avoid the pervasive recessive trend. We increased our earning performance, lastingly improved our cost base and significantly strengthened our position in the global market.” Looking forward G&D expects its revenue to increase in the current year, thanks to new projects and the rollout of new products. The company noted that in April 2004, it had been awarded the contract for the Austrian social insurance e-card, a project requiring eleven million chip cards and worth Euro 48 million. Meanwhile, Berchtold said that it was well prepared for the launch of the smart health card in Germany from 2006 – with a number of pilots and projects underway. In a separate announcement, G&D said it has licensed the low-cost contactless smart card Jewel chip from UK-based Innovision Research & Technology. The chip is designed for mass transit ticketing and with its small silicon area it is claimed to be the smallest and lowest-cost chip ever produced for smart card applications. A major advantage of the low cost card is the ability for transit agencies to use smart card technology for single ride tickets – something that is often seen as prohibitively expensive. This allows operators to migrate to a 100% smart card ticketing solution. The company said it is already attracting interest from the US mass transit sector and that the chip is compatible with international standards – including ISO 14443A, the UK’s ITSO version 2.1 and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey’s Regional Interoperability Standards (RIS) Limited Use fare card specifications. Contact: Heather Klein at G&D, Tel +1 703 480 2086, Fax +1 703 480 2067, Email
[email protected]
Card Technology Today June 2004
tokens
BT signs deal with ActivCard British Telecom has signed a multimillionpound deal with ActivCard to provide security tokens for up to 70,000 staff. The major telecoms company said it chose ActivCard ahead of RSA in order to reduce the cost of network authentication for its staff working from any location. Marc Hudavert, general manager of ActivCard Europe, said that the company had already taken delivery of 25,000 key-fob-style devices that deliver randomly selected number passwords. Authentication is controlled by the ActivCard AAA server. In a subsequent phase, BT will also use tokens that plug into USB ports, as well as smart cards, which could also be used to allow building access. As an extra bonus for ActivCard, BT also plans to sell packages of authentication tokens, software and services to its own clients.
contactless payment
School opts for contactless payment The Australian International School Singapore (AISS) has integrated a cashless payment application into the identity cards carried by its staff and students. The cards and readers are being supplied by Inside Contactless, while the CAMPUS cashless payment application is being deployed by its partner Smart Card Innovations. The system allows students and staff to purchase food, uniforms, stationary, photocopies, prints and pay for excursions. It can also track attendance and work with existing libraries infrastructures. The AISS contactless smart card stores the cardholder’s personal information and provides access to a cash value that can be topped up using an online payment service – the eNETS Virtual Account. Virtual Account VCard account holders can use the Internet to access their accounts and make secure payments via the Internet, mobile phones and smart cards. If a card is lost, staff, students and parents can access their account online and disable the card. Other useful functions on the card include the ability for parents to monitor students’ dietary habits via the internet and the option to reward students for making healthy food choices in the school canteen. The card is able to alert canteen vendors to food allergies or restrictions for individual student.
in brief • Gemplus International has announced the appointment of a new chief financial officer and executive vice president effective June 2004. Frans Spaargaren will replaces Yves Guillaumot, who, after six years at Gemplus leaves to pursue other interests. Spaargaren, 48, was formerly executive vice president of Philips International. • Malaysia’s largest MasterCard merchant acquirer, MBF Cards, has ordered 10,000 EMV-certified T7Plus card payment terminals from Hypercom. The terminals will be rolled out to retail outlets during the next 12 months. Malaysia’s central bank requires that at least 85% of the region’s financial institutions have EMV-certified terminals in place by the end of 2004. • Gemplus International has made moves to further rationalise its manufacturing capacity. The supplier said the cuts result from the sector’s general over-capacity for the manufacture of PVC card bodies in Europe. Gemplus proposes to operate with one specialist PVC site in Europe (Havant, England) and to concentrate its personalisation activities for Germany on one site, in Filderstadt. The company will close its other German manufacturing facility in Herne, whose activities will transfer to Havant and Filderstadt. Up to 180 redundancies will be made. The salesforce, technical consultants and the R&D team at Ismaning, Germany, are unaffected by these plans, the supplier said. Havant was given the thumbs up since it already successfully supplies the fast-growing bankcard market in the UK. Equally, Filderstadt has a strong reputation for its current activities, and Gemplus said it was best placed to respond to the significant opportunities which it foresees developing in the German market. • Atmel has announced that its secure AVR architecture has been selected as one of the two silicon platforms for the next generation Vitale French National Health Card. A contract for the card’s development was recently awarded to Sagem by the GIE SESAM-VITALE. Atmel’s secureAVR architecture is based on an 8bit/16-bit RISC core specifically tailored to host highly secure applications. Many of Atmel’s secure microcontrollers based on this architecture have already been granted Common Criteria certification to EAL4+. Atmel already supplies secure microcontrollers for the first generation Vitale card, which has been issued to tens of millions of French people.
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events
in brief • Datakey, a provider of information security products, has announced that the Central Arizona Project (CAP) has selected it to provide authentication and secure identity management for its employees. CAP wants to implement an identity management product that combines both building and network security. It chose Datakey’s Axis solution, which will require each CAP employee to be issued with a smart ID card for entrance to its facilities. The same ID card is then used in combination with a PIN to access workstation, network and business applications with a single login. Meanwhile, Datakey announced its financial results for the first quarter ended 31 March 2004. Revenue for the first quarter grew to US$1.5 million, up 89% on the same period of 2003, where the company made US$794,000. First quarter net losses narrowed to US$1.15 million, compared with a net loss of $1.55 million in the first quarter of 2003. • Leisure Pass North America has awarded UK-based smart card systems specialist Applied Card Technologies (ACT) a renewed three year contract for the New York city visitor management system. The UK-based firm is also responsible for the implementation and management of the London Pass and the Dublin Pass with more city systems currently being deployed. The smart card-based New York Pass uses ACT’s Generic City Leisure (GCL) solution, which is a turnkey system aimed at those organisations which operate within the leisure industry, typically tourism bodies and local and central government, with a remit to encourage visitors to cities and the individual attractions within them. The prepaid New York pass is valid for one, two, three or seven days and offers free or discounted access to over 40 of New York’s ‘must see’ sites. In 2003 New York Pass tourist attractions saw over 40,000 visitors with the passes amounting to some 300,000 transactions, more than double the numbers in 2002. A 150% increase in customers is expected in 2004. • More than half of food retailing executives in the USA believe that smart cards will replace other forms of payment at the checkout in the next five to 10 years. The statistics come from the US Food Marketing Institute, in its Food Marketing Industry Speaks, 2004, report. Meanwhile, 55% of executives believe that self-scanning lanes will outnumber regular checkout lanes, and 28% thought that checkout sales could be eliminated altogether. Both of these developments would increase the number of card-based transactions.
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Parents can also put a daily spend limit on their children’s identity cards, a move that is aimed at teaching students about budgeting. The team of suppliers hope to roll the CAMPUS solution out in Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia and the USA this year with other countries to follow in 2005. Contact: Geraldine Sauniere-Miallet Tel: +33 4 42 39 63 00, Fax: +33 4 42 39 63 19, Email:
[email protected]
credit card
Gemplus delivers new MasterCard cards French smart card manufacturer Gemplus has announced the delivery of next generation MasterCard payment smart cards to a Russian
Standard Bank. According to the supplier, the deal was the first worldwide delivery of the MasterCard M/Chip version 4 card. Delivery was made with partners IVK Systems, which provided the personalisation solution, and TietoEnator, which provided the host system. Using the cards Russian Standard will be able to add value for existing customers and attract new business by adding extra applications. The new cards will handle point of sale debit or credit, as well as pre-authorised debit payments, which enable secure offline debit transactions. Gemplus said that its GemShare (M/Chip(TM) 4) smart cards would allow Russian banks to migrate to the international EMV(2) standard, which provide worldwide interoperability. Contact: Marielle Bricman at Gemplus, Tel: +33 4 42 36 55 96, email:
[email protected]
Events Calendar 5-6 August 2004 Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sydney
Loyalty World Australia Now in its second year, Loyalty World Australia provides an insight into loyalty strategies and technologies in the region.
www.terrapinn.com/2004/loyalty_Au 6-8 August 2004 Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sydney
Cards Australia 2004 The latest smart card discussions in Australasia. The Pacific region has experienced rapid growth and Australia itself, already the base of major manufacturers and systems integrators, is adopting chip card technology in transport and payment applications.
other players from Asia and beyond.
www.gsmconferences.com/3gsmasa 13-15 October 2004 QeII Conference Centre, London, UK
Biometrics 2004 Organised by the publishers of CTT and its sister publication Biometric Technology Today, Biometrics 2004 will provide an insight into the opportunities provided by biometrics and other related technologies, such as smart cards, to improve security and enhance customer service. The threeday event will feature analysts, consultants, suppliers and pioneering users of biometric and smart card systems as well as an exhibition of over 70 exhibitors. There is also a focus on the area of identification technologies and the issues surrounding their introduction.
Tel: +61 2 9005 0773, Email:
[email protected], Web: www.worldofcards.biz/2004
Tel: +44 1367 718500, Fax: +44 1367 718 300, Web: www.biometrics-2004.com
22-24 September 2004 International Advanced Communications Centre (CICA), Sophia Antipolis, France
18-20 October 2004 Hyatt Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, California, USA
Eurosmart, GlobalPlatform and Java Card Forum present the 5th edition of this smart card conference. The event aims to deliver a global and objective overview, an update on the latest business and technology trends as well as a vision of the future for smart cards.
This annual conference, now in its 12th year, celebrates the advances in smart card adoption across the industry verticals that represent the North American marketplace. So far, listed sessions will address industry trends and technology advances in retail payments, government, cellular, transit, and new emerging markets and explore the many variations and form factors for smart card technology that fit unique market requirements for transaction security and identity management.
e-smart 5th edition
Web: www.eurosmart.com 27 September – 1 October 2004 Suntac International Convention and Exhibition Center, Singapore
3GSM World Congress Asia The event is launched in Singapore, and will attract key operators, vendors and
Smart Card Alliance 12th Annual Conference
Web: www.smartcardalliance.org
Card Technology Today June 2004