Technology group Giesecke & Devrient is set to supply the Swiss banks with an EMV chip for their ec/Maestro cards.
G&D's chip solution, called StarCH, combines an EMV debit application with "CASH", the Swiss banks' electronic purse function.
G&D has implemented the standard in StarCH in line with the card organizations' exacting security requirements. The electronic purse function is based on the Proton R3 specification.
The Swiss banking community is migrating its roughly 3.7 million ec/Maestro cards to EMV in a joint project entitled EMVI '03 (EMV Issuing 2003) led by Europay (Switzerland) SA. Besides better security, the banks expect EMV to bring other benefits due to the fact that ec/Maestro payments are processed partially off-line.
This reduces merchants' communication costs, cuts the handling time at the POS terminal and increases availability in the event of a system failure. The Swiss ec/Maestro cards will continue to support micropayments via the CASH electronic purse function on the StarCH chip..
The Swiss project is one of the first EMV card launches in European banking
circles. "For G&D, this pilot project means entry into the Swiss market for
smart cards used in payment systems. The combination of debit and credit
applications with a Proton R3 based electronic purse is a new development
that G&D has tailored specifically to the Swiss banking community's
requirements", said Dieter Bulle, Executive Vice President Payment
Division at G&D, pointing up the significance of the project.
