Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is offering commercial banks in Italy what is truly one-stop service, from process consulting to card production right through to implementation of the EMV solution tailored to the needs and requirements of each individual bank. Metalplex, an Italian company whose activities include supplying software programs for government authorities such as police and the army will now be making use of this service. With the aid of the Munich-based smart card specialists, Metalplex will be implementing a card personalization solution for migrating to the EMV standard. In return, G&D has concluded an extensive partnership agreement with the company. As part of the recently concluded partnership agreement, G&D will be supplying Metalplex with the equipment for its new personalization center at the companys headquarters in Benevento and providing support throughout the entire process of putting the system in place. The project is scheduled for completion by the beginning of 2004, from which time on EMV cards for the Italian market will be personalized in Benevento with customer data from each bank and there readied for mailing at the lettershop. Furthermore, the smart card specialists will assist Metalplex in meeting the security guidelines specified by the card organizations and the ABI (Associazione Bancaria Italiana/Association of Italian Banks), in addition to serving as consultant to its Italian partner on the complex EMV card personalization process. In Italy, the pilot phase for converting from magnetic stripe payment cards to secure chip cards was successfully completed in June of this year with the active assistance of G&D at a number of commercial banks. This means that around 50,000 cards produced by the Munich technology company in line with the EMV guidelines are already in use. July saw the ABI initiating the rollout phase for conversion to the chip card system, and the EMV-conform card produced by G&D for the Italian market was among the first to achieve certification.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now