Card Technology articles from May 2006

Card Technology archives from May 2006

From The Front Lines: Consumers may be confused at first, but they will adapt to new payment methods that offer added convenience.
May 1, 2006... If you want to know how consumers like a new payment method, there is no better way than to walk into stores and ask them, and the clerks who ring up their purchases. That is the approach Card Technology took to gauging the progress of...

Officials Issue First E-Passports As Testing Continues.
May 1, 2006... The next round of interoperability testing for electronic passports and readers set to be held in Berlin at the end of May promises to be the most rigorous yet, predicts Gary McDonald, chairman of the International Civil Aviation Organization's...

Newswatch: Americas.(On Track Innovations Ltd. profits rise)(MasterCard International Inc. signed by baseball teams)(GlobalPlatform appoints Kevin Gillick )
May 1, 2006... U.S. CONTACTLESS PAYMENTS BOOST OTI RESULTS On Track Innovations Ltd., an Israel-based contactless smart card company, reported revenue of $35.7 million in 2005, up 54% from $23.2 million in 2004. In a conference call, the company...

Newswatch: Europe.(smart cards usage)
May 1, 2006... UK ANALYST WARNS OF CHIP-AND-PIN SECURITY SHORTFALLS The advent of "chip-and-PIN" smart cards, which requires users to enter a personal identification number instead of signing to complete a transaction, has raised the specter of possible...

Calendar.
May 1, 2006... June 8-9: Electronic Passport Forum - Paris Organized by Wise Media For more information, contact Wise Media at: +39 02 8903 4126 epassportwisemedia.com www.electronic-passport.com June 13 & 15: Cardware 2006-Toronto and...

VeriFone Buying Lipman For $793M.(Lipman Electronic Engineering)
May 1, 2006... U.S.-based VeriFone's planned $793 million (655 million euros) purchase of Lipman Electronic Engineering will give it new technology and distribution channels, say analysts and company executives. VeriFone announced last month it would buy...

Inside Contactless Founder Steps Aside.(Jacek Kowalski, new CEO Remy de Tonnac )
May 1, 2006... France-based Inside Contactless, a supplier of chips for contactless payment and access control, announced in late March that a new CEO will replace founder and chief executive Jacek Kowalski. The move is part of a management restructuring...

Newswatch: Asia.(Visa International introduces smart cards)
May 1, 2006... VISA LEARNS CONTACTLESS LESSON IN TAIWAN: FASTER IS BETTER Visa International's Asia-Pacific regional office says issuers had rolled out 300,000 Visa-branded contactless credit cards as of last month in Taiwan and are issuing about 15,000...

People on the Move.(Inside Contactless appoints Charles Watson, Philippe Martineau)(Hypercom Corp. appoints Philippe Tartavull)(ABI Research appoints Clint Wheelock )(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Inside Contactless, a France-based supplier of contactless chips for payment and access control cards, has hired two executives. Charles Watson will head up a new payment unit as the company's executive vice president of sales and marketing....

Can Polar Opposites Become Mirror Images?: Consumers in Japan and the United States seem far apart in their payment preferences today. But the growing appeal of the credit card in Japan and the mobile phone in the United States could change that.
May 1, 2006... Consumers tend to stick with what they know, rather than risk trying something new. In an age of "personalization," companies engineer many products so they can appeal to a broad audience, but with a tailored offer. It's why there are so many...

Japan Goes Mobile With Transit Ticketing: While other train and bus operators around the world debate launching contactless ticketing with mobile phones, Japan's JR East Is in full rollout mode. Card Technology puts JR's Mobile Suica through its paces.
May 1, 2006... Shinjuku Station in Tokyo is the busiest in the world, serving more than 2 million riders a day, who hop on and off no fewer than 11 metro and commuter rail lines the feed directly into it. At least five of those lines belong to Japan...

High-Speed SIM Decision Put Off.(SanDisk Corp.)
May 1, 2006... Standards makers put off an important vote on a proposed high-speed interface for the SIM card after U.S.-based SanDisk Corp. submitted last-minute claims to patents on both of the technologies under consideration. The Smart Card Platform...

Deadline Nears For U.S. Federal Employee ID: U.S. officials are gearing up to issue interoperable ID cards to 12 million federal employees and contractors. Security-conscious Washington has kept the pressure on to meet an October deadline.
May 1, 2006... U.S. officials face a looming deadline to deploy a uniform identification badge designed to verify the ID of federal employees, no matter which agency issued it. The Personal Identity Verification project is expected to eventually cover...

Feds To Issue New Employee ID Card.
May 1, 2006... Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 released in 2004 mandates that U.S. federal agencies begin issuing standardized ID cards to employees and contractors by this October. White House is pushing HSPD-12 as a way to secure federal...

Getting Good E-passport Photos Is Tougher Than Imagined.(electronic passports)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Capturing a suitable passport photograph used to be simple enough. All the citizen had to do was sit in a photo booth or have a snapshot taken at a local photo store. In the era of electronic passports, all that has changed. Now the photo...

Will That Be Cash, Card Or Finger?: U.S. consumers are being offered many new ways to pay. The real payoff may be in lower transaction fees for merchants.
May 1, 2006... While major issuers and payment brands are pressing U.S. retailers to accept contactless cards and fobs at their checkout counters, technology vendors are pushing other new ways for consumers to pay, including with their fingers. And a major...

In Brief: French Card Market Continues To Grow.(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... The number of payment cards in France, issued mainly by the country's major banks, topped 50 million for the first time in 2005, according to card organization Groupement des Cartes Bancaires, which says transactions, volume and average card...

Hold The Phone: There Is Another Way To Pay.
May 1, 2006... A mobile phone can do many things a finger or card cannot, such as display an offer from a merchant or enable a consumer to pay any merchant connected to the mobile network. With 200 million mobile subscribers out of a U.S. population of about...

In Brief: Aussie Bank Pilots PayPass.(Commonwealth Bank of Australia signed by MasterCard International Inc. for contactless payment )
May 1, 2006... The Commonwealth Bank of Australia will launch the first Australian pilot of MasterCard International's PayPass contactless payment application, allowing consumers to pay by tapping cards or key fobs against readers. The bank will issue...

Is The World Ready For Contactless Payment?(smart cards)
May 1, 2006... Japan's Bold Move Into Mobile Credit Japan's giant mobile telco, NTT DoCoMo, turns its eye toward payments, and banks and card companies are forced to respond. Using millions of contactless "mobile-wallet" phones, the network operator aims...

Contactless In New York: Time For A Reality Check: Nearly a year after contactless payment cards began to roll out, some merchants are seeing contactless transactions, while others wait and hope for more cards to be issued.
May 1, 2006... Marianne Crimar works the day shift at the Little Pie Company of the Big Apple's store in the Chelsea district of lower Manhattan. Since January, she says, the store has accepted contactless payment cards, and even has a MasterCard...

A Lemonade To Go-And Make It Fast.
May 1, 2006... Call it a wild urge, but I was recently standing on a platform in the Ikebukuro commuter train station in Tokyo, a few stops from Shinjuku, and I wanted a warm lemonade. I saw it there, in the vending machine on the platform. This also...

DoCoMo Furthers Foray Into Payment Market.(NTT DoCoMo Inc.)
May 1, 2006... NTT DoCoMo last month announced the widely anticipated launch of its own credit payment service, allowing its subscribers to tap their handsets to make retail purchases. With its earlier introduction of a credit brand to compete with those...

Advertising Index.(Directory)
May 1, 2006... Advanced Card Systems 10 Tel: +852 2796 7873 Web site: www.acs.com.hk E-mail: infoacs.com.hk Cartes Inside Back Cover Tel: +33 (0) 1 49 68 52 66 Web site:...

Contact Our Advertising Sales Representatives.
May 1, 2006... United States and Canada Jim Baker phone 312 983 6179 fax 312 913 1334 james.baker sourcemedia.com Europe & Asia Bernard Pingree Jean-Charles Abeille phone + 33 (01) 46 43 00 66 fax + 33 (01) 46 43 01 34...

Moving Forward: EMV rollouts make progress.(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... STEP BY STEP Banks and credit card companies issued nearly 145 million smart cards complying with the international EMV standard in 2005, 8% more than the previous year. Banks and merchants also deployed 1.4 million point-of-sale terminals...