World-wide financial institutions and their payment systems are transitioning from the use of magnetic stripes to smart card technology. The main driver for this transition is to prevent fraud by skimming (cloning a card), which is relatively simple with magnetic stripes.
This transition enables the compliance with the EMV-standard. The EMV-standard is issued by the companies Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) and describes the technical specifications for the use of (payment) chip cards and terminals.
Issuing EMV-debit and credit cards presents banks with new challenges. For many years banks were working with relatively simple magnetic strip data, now with the introduction of the smart chip, new data has to be generated, use of cryptographic algorithms must be adapted, and the risk parameters managed.
This EMV transition process is not only a requirement of large banks, but also for the moderately large and small financial institutions. The Belgian Europabank is one such player. They were looking for a ready-made solution so that it could independently issue its own EMV-credit card and personalise them instantly in-house. We were able to offer and implement such a solution, including the delivery of the smartcards, software and personalisation equipment in less than 3 months.
Special data preparation software now incorporates the data stream with all EMV specific data elements. A key management system provides the use of cryptographic keys together with the personalisation software to automate the loading of all data onto the smart chip. By using the combination of the durable Datacard 280 embosser and Datacard CP60 printer for applying the visual data on the card, issuing EMV credit cards in house has become highly feasible for Europabank.
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