Incard Celebrates Industry First as High-Security Card Gains Approval for Payment Applications in Italy

Incard Celebrates Industry First as High-Security Card Gains Approval for Payment Applications in Italy

Incard is first to support clone-proof Dynamic Data Authentication for Italian market and beyond

GENEVA, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Incard, a global leader in providing smartcard-based e-commerce solutions, today announced a new chip payment card, the first to feature Dynamic Data Authentication (DDA) and to achieve Consorzio Bancomat approval allowing its use in Italian payment-card applications. The new Incard product also supports the Visa and Mastercard® payment applications, thereby meeting the global EMV(TM) (EuroPay, MasterCard and Visa) mandate for cards to support DDA from January 2011.

DDA maximizes security for offline card-present transactions by generating a unique numerical signature for each transaction. In contrast, conventional Static Data Authentication (SDA) cards generate signatures that can only be verified online, which could, theoretically, lead to cloning of the card. The capabilities of DDA greatly increase the possibilities to use these cards in many diverse payment applications without jeopardizing security.

By supporting the VIS 1.4.1, M/Chip4, and ICC 1.0.1 payment applications for Visa, Mastercard and Consorzio Bancomat, respectively, Incard's credit/debit product allows the card embedder to select the application during initialization. This saves companies from having to maintain individual stocks of cards for each application.

In addition to providing enhanced security for transactions, Incard's product also supports the EMV Card Personalization Specification (EMV CPS 1.1). By supporting this industry-standard CPS, it maximizes freedom for card personalization independent of the card vendor.

"Our new DDA card is an important industry first for EMV payment cards, combining the most advanced transaction authentication, support for all major payment applications and industry-standard card personalization," said Michele Scarlatella, Vice President for Marketing, Incard. "This new platform has already received a very important certification from Consorzio Bancomat, a leading banking institution."

Incard is currently providing samples to key customers with volume production scheduled from October 2010.

About Incard

A member of the STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) group, Incard is a leading smartcard manufacturer, offering a complete range of products for Telecommunications, Payment, Transport, Healthcare, Loyalty, and Identity markets. With its know-how and proven expertise, Incard has gained the trust of a global customer base in the different sectors of smart-card solutions with a full range of flexible products, where security and portability are the key factors. Further information on Incard can be found at http://www.incard-sa.com

    For further information, please contact:

    Mariarosaria Migliaccio
    Central Marketing
    Incard
    +39 0823630260
    mariarosaria.migliaccio@st.com

All trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE  Incard

Incard

CONTACT: Mariarosaria Migliaccio, Central Marketing of Incard, +39 0823630260, mariarosaria.migliaccio@st.com

Web Site: http://www.incard-sa.com