Thales e-Securitys P3 chosen to issue first EMV cards in Lithuania

Thales P3 sits at the core of TietoEnators EMV solution and helps simplify the smart card migration process by providing all the cryptographic data required. The key benefits of Thales P3 are a secure data preparation process, 100% in-house control over cryptographic keys and limited impact on the banks host systems. P3 is developed in conjunction with MasterCard and Visa and has been sold to smart card issuers and bureaux in more than 30 countries around the world. TietoEnator provided the Estonia based Hansabank with a solution for issuing smart cards, including card authorisation message processing and EMV verification. In addition, the company provided consultation during the installation process. As part of the overall solution, P3 takes a file of cardholder data records, the same one the banks were using to issue magnetic stripe cards, and processes each record to produce the additional data required for smart cards. It then creates an output file containing all the necessary EMV data, which can be loaded onto the chip. With this implementation, Thales e-Security and TietoEnator have taken an important step in the provision of EMV standard smart card processing infrastructure for the European banking sector. EMV migration in the Baltics is moving fast: the first EMV smart card in the Baltics was issued in December 2002, and banks have issued more than 200,000 cards until today. Given the size of domestic market, this figure ranks Baltic banking in the forefront of EMV migration in the Central and Eastern Europe. About P3 The P3 system is designed to provide card issuers with a ready-made way of migrating from magnetic stripe cards to smart cards. Aimed primarily at the payments card industry, it offers the ability to generate data for credit/debit and electronic purse payment cards. Using P3 reduces or eliminates the need to make changes to the issuers host system thereby reducing implementation costs and timescales. Ideal for use in both personalisation bureaux or in-house card issuers such as banks and similar institutions, P3 generates and maintains the cryptographic keys required for the secure personalisation of cards. This includes the exchange of public key certificates with the scheme Certification Authorities operated by associations such as Visa and MasterCard.