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Proton World goes global
Proton World goes global
Feature
Proton World goes global Trials of interoperability across Europe, the issue of mass transit cards in South Africa and new facilities for trans-Atlantic Internet payments are setting Proton on the road to becoming a global electronic purse.
The European banks that are planning to issue an interoperable e-purse in January 2001 (see p2) owe a lot to the Proton World team and to the Belgian banks that have backed them. Proton World – whose shareholders are American Express, Banksys (Belgian banks), ERG,Interpay (Dutch banks) and Visa International – was a prime mover in the development of the CEPS standards. The company is now taking Proton technology beyond Belgium and Netherlands to develop a European, and eventually world-wide, infrastructure for a global electronic purse. The European pilot will use CEPS-based versions of existing e-purse smart cards: Belgian Proton cards, Dutch Chipknip cards (also using Proton technology), and two Spanish purse cards - Visa Cash and Monedero 4B. Cards in the pilot will also be branded either as Clip (Europay International’s international e-purse brand) or as Visa Cash (Visa’s international e-purse brand). In both phases of the pilot, cardholders will be able to load their cards and to make purchases both in their ‘home country’ and in the two ‘foreign’ countries. Interoperability will not only be between countries and schemes but also between the Proton technology used in Belgium and in the Netherlands and the proprietary technologies used in Spain. The international interoperability offered by CEPS should make e-purses issued by different European banks as easy to use as euro notes and coins (which will enter circulation on 1 January 2002 in 11 countries) - in home markets, when travelling abroad or over the Internet. Proton World’s long-term goals have recently been spelt out by Armand Linkens, managing director and CEO : “Proton World was created to boost international efforts towards interoperability. I am proud that the company has played a key part in the development of CEPS: we were the first to announce our intention to implement CEPS in April 1999; in November 1999 we won the Sesames Award for the CEPS-based Proton e-purse and in July 2000 we joined CEPSCO. I am sure that the success of this pilot will attract other
12 • Ctt October 2000
e-purse issuers to join us, so that CEPS can be developed, as we intended, into a worldwide standard.” Meanwhile, Proton technology has been exported to South Africa, where it will be used in a mass transit application. PEP Bank (a divison of BoE Bank, one of the country’s leading banks) has become a Proton licensee. The bank is to launch a smart card pilot with 25,000 smart cards in the Cape Town area on November 1st; the pilot is to run for one year and the first application on the card will be the Proton e-purse. Ten thousand of the cards will be issued to accountholding customers who will be able to load value on to the purse at bank ATMs. The other 15,000 cards will be issued to selected individuals without bank accounts, who will be able to load value on to their cards - against cash - at load terminals in railway stations, banks and shops. The first large merchant and co-branding partner to join the scheme is the Cape Town section of the South African national transport operator, Metrorail. The target pilot group will be daily commuters using the Mitchells Plain and Cape Town stations. Metrorail Proton payment terminals have been developed for use in the rail stations. Other terminals from a range of manufacturers will be offered to merchants in retail outlets close to the stations; if all goes well, the pilot will be extended to the whole of the Cape Town rail and retail sector, with the aim of a national roll-out to follow. The cards will have a load limit of Rand 500. All the cards will carry the Visa Cash, PEP Bank and Metrorail brands; South Africa thus becomes the first country where Proton-based Visa Cash cards have been issued, following the agreement reached between Proton World and Visa International in November 1999. For Proton World, this is a first step into the mass transit sector in a country where the majority of the population do not have bank accounts but are frequent public transport users.
Oberthur Card System’s moves to centre stage PEP Bank is a joint initiative by Boland PKS (also a division of BoE Bank) and Pepkor, the country’s largest retail group. The bank offers ‘affordable’ financial services to those who might not otherwise have bank accounts. Basic services on offer include savings accounts linked to ATM cards and personal loans. The bank is registered with the Micro Finance Regulatory Council, which controls rates of interest on small loans. The PEP group operates the national chain of PEP stores. Metrorail operates rail commuter services under contract to the South African Rail Commuter Corporation. Cape Metrorail currently captures some 60% of the region’s public transport market. Each weekday it runs 620 trains – providing 802,000 passenger journeys – to 112 stations. Meanwhile in the US, the Pathways Group (the country’s second Proton licensee - American Express was the first) has formed an alliance with Europe’s SmartAxis. SmartAxis offers a payment service that enables consumers to use e-purse cards for shopping on the Internet. The new alliance means that merchants (mostly European) using the SmartAxis network will be able to take payments made with Pathways Proton cards loaded with US dollars. Conversely, US merchants using the Pathways service will be able to accept payments in any of the European currencies and technologies running on the SmartAxis service. SmartAxis currently handles payments
using both Mondex and Proton cards. The company also has an agreement with Europay to integrate any European e-purse schemes (which will, of course, include those running under CEPS) into the SmartAxis business network. Now that the Clip brand is moving towards interoperability (see above) a Clip/SmartAxis programme should eventually make it possible for merchants acoss Europe to accept e-purse payments, regardless of the country in which the purse was issued. Some 100 million ‘domestic’ e-purse cards are already in issue in national schemes across Europe. Adding Pathways to this network brings US consumers and US merchants into a trans-Atlantic e-shopping nexus. CPI Card Group is to become the first Americanbased card personalisation centre for Proton-based cards. CPI is one of the leading manufacturers of magnetic-stripe cards in North America. Last year, it shipped 450 million magnetic-stripe cards to a wide variety of customers from its production centre in Los Angeles. CPI also shipped 85 million cards from its secure card production facility at Denver, which is where the Proton-based cards will be personalised. Contact: Dominique Hautain at Proton World, Tel: +32 2 724 5111, e-mail: [email protected]
Feature
Oberthur Card Systems moves to centre stage Oberthur Card Systems has just raised E 200 million through floating 15% of its capital on the Paris Stock Exchange. This makes it the first smart card company to have its shares listed on a public stock exchange. Card Technology Today’s editor David Jones reports on the latest developments at Oberthur and talks to Ian Robson, who heads up the company’s UK and Northern Europe business Expansion is very much the order of the day at Oberthur Card Systems, following the raising on the Paris Stock Exchange of 200 million. More investment is planned, with some £5 million going into the UK smart card manufacturing facility at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. Oberthur Card Systems is an affiliate of the privatelyCharles Oberthur. held French security printers Francois-C The acquisition of the Card Division of the UK’s De La Rue
in October 1999 was the culmination of several years of takeovers and corporate reshuffles; the successful public offering this year means that the company can now concentrate on building its share of the international microprocessor smart card business, alongside its two French rivals Gemplus and Schlumberger and its German rivals Giesecke & Devrient and Orga. As far as the UK is concerned, with 500 employees and new manufacturing lines being installed in its
Ctt October 2000 • 13
Feature
Proton World goes global Trials of interoperability across Europe, the issue of mass transit cards in South Africa and new facilities for trans-Atlantic Internet payments are setting Proton on the road to becoming a global electronic purse.
The European banks that are planning to issue an interoperable e-purse in January 2001 (see p2) owe a lot to the Proton World team and to the Belgian banks that have backed them. Proton World – whose shareholders are American Express, Banksys (Belgian banks), ERG,Interpay (Dutch banks) and Visa International – was a prime mover in the development of the CEPS standards. The company is now taking Proton technology beyond Belgium and Netherlands to develop a European, and eventually world-wide, infrastructure for a global electronic purse. The European pilot will use CEPS-based versions of existing e-purse smart cards: Belgian Proton cards, Dutch Chipknip cards (also using Proton technology), and two Spanish purse cards - Visa Cash and Monedero 4B. Cards in the pilot will also be branded either as Clip (Europay International’s international e-purse brand) or as Visa Cash (Visa’s international e-purse brand). In both phases of the pilot, cardholders will be able to load their cards and to make purchases both in their ‘home country’ and in the two ‘foreign’ countries. Interoperability will not only be between countries and schemes but also between the Proton technology used in Belgium and in the Netherlands and the proprietary technologies used in Spain. The international interoperability offered by CEPS should make e-purses issued by different European banks as easy to use as euro notes and coins (which will enter circulation on 1 January 2002 in 11 countries) - in home markets, when travelling abroad or over the Internet. Proton World’s long-term goals have recently been spelt out by Armand Linkens, managing director and CEO : “Proton World was created to boost international efforts towards interoperability. I am proud that the company has played a key part in the development of CEPS: we were the first to announce our intention to implement CEPS in April 1999; in November 1999 we won the Sesames Award for the CEPS-based Proton e-purse and in July 2000 we joined CEPSCO. I am sure that the success of this pilot will attract other
12 • Ctt October 2000
e-purse issuers to join us, so that CEPS can be developed, as we intended, into a worldwide standard.” Meanwhile, Proton technology has been exported to South Africa, where it will be used in a mass transit application. PEP Bank (a divison of BoE Bank, one of the country’s leading banks) has become a Proton licensee. The bank is to launch a smart card pilot with 25,000 smart cards in the Cape Town area on November 1st; the pilot is to run for one year and the first application on the card will be the Proton e-purse. Ten thousand of the cards will be issued to accountholding customers who will be able to load value on to the purse at bank ATMs. The other 15,000 cards will be issued to selected individuals without bank accounts, who will be able to load value on to their cards - against cash - at load terminals in railway stations, banks and shops. The first large merchant and co-branding partner to join the scheme is the Cape Town section of the South African national transport operator, Metrorail. The target pilot group will be daily commuters using the Mitchells Plain and Cape Town stations. Metrorail Proton payment terminals have been developed for use in the rail stations. Other terminals from a range of manufacturers will be offered to merchants in retail outlets close to the stations; if all goes well, the pilot will be extended to the whole of the Cape Town rail and retail sector, with the aim of a national roll-out to follow. The cards will have a load limit of Rand 500. All the cards will carry the Visa Cash, PEP Bank and Metrorail brands; South Africa thus becomes the first country where Proton-based Visa Cash cards have been issued, following the agreement reached between Proton World and Visa International in November 1999. For Proton World, this is a first step into the mass transit sector in a country where the majority of the population do not have bank accounts but are frequent public transport users.
Oberthur Card System’s moves to centre stage PEP Bank is a joint initiative by Boland PKS (also a division of BoE Bank) and Pepkor, the country’s largest retail group. The bank offers ‘affordable’ financial services to those who might not otherwise have bank accounts. Basic services on offer include savings accounts linked to ATM cards and personal loans. The bank is registered with the Micro Finance Regulatory Council, which controls rates of interest on small loans. The PEP group operates the national chain of PEP stores. Metrorail operates rail commuter services under contract to the South African Rail Commuter Corporation. Cape Metrorail currently captures some 60% of the region’s public transport market. Each weekday it runs 620 trains – providing 802,000 passenger journeys – to 112 stations. Meanwhile in the US, the Pathways Group (the country’s second Proton licensee - American Express was the first) has formed an alliance with Europe’s SmartAxis. SmartAxis offers a payment service that enables consumers to use e-purse cards for shopping on the Internet. The new alliance means that merchants (mostly European) using the SmartAxis network will be able to take payments made with Pathways Proton cards loaded with US dollars. Conversely, US merchants using the Pathways service will be able to accept payments in any of the European currencies and technologies running on the SmartAxis service. SmartAxis currently handles payments
using both Mondex and Proton cards. The company also has an agreement with Europay to integrate any European e-purse schemes (which will, of course, include those running under CEPS) into the SmartAxis business network. Now that the Clip brand is moving towards interoperability (see above) a Clip/SmartAxis programme should eventually make it possible for merchants acoss Europe to accept e-purse payments, regardless of the country in which the purse was issued. Some 100 million ‘domestic’ e-purse cards are already in issue in national schemes across Europe. Adding Pathways to this network brings US consumers and US merchants into a trans-Atlantic e-shopping nexus. CPI Card Group is to become the first Americanbased card personalisation centre for Proton-based cards. CPI is one of the leading manufacturers of magnetic-stripe cards in North America. Last year, it shipped 450 million magnetic-stripe cards to a wide variety of customers from its production centre in Los Angeles. CPI also shipped 85 million cards from its secure card production facility at Denver, which is where the Proton-based cards will be personalised. Contact: Dominique Hautain at Proton World, Tel: +32 2 724 5111, e-mail: [email protected]
Feature
Oberthur Card Systems moves to centre stage Oberthur Card Systems has just raised E 200 million through floating 15% of its capital on the Paris Stock Exchange. This makes it the first smart card company to have its shares listed on a public stock exchange. Card Technology Today’s editor David Jones reports on the latest developments at Oberthur and talks to Ian Robson, who heads up the company’s UK and Northern Europe business Expansion is very much the order of the day at Oberthur Card Systems, following the raising on the Paris Stock Exchange of 200 million. More investment is planned, with some £5 million going into the UK smart card manufacturing facility at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. Oberthur Card Systems is an affiliate of the privatelyCharles Oberthur. held French security printers Francois-C The acquisition of the Card Division of the UK’s De La Rue
in October 1999 was the culmination of several years of takeovers and corporate reshuffles; the successful public offering this year means that the company can now concentrate on building its share of the international microprocessor smart card business, alongside its two French rivals Gemplus and Schlumberger and its German rivals Giesecke & Devrient and Orga. As far as the UK is concerned, with 500 employees and new manufacturing lines being installed in its
Ctt October 2000 • 13