London: ACI Worldwide, Thales and MAOSCO today announced the launch of their In-Branch Smart Card Issuance Solution which they will demonstrate at Cartes 2004 in Paris. The first complete end-to-end solution on the market, it enables banks to issue smart cards from their branches.

Scalable and innovative, the ACI Worldwide, Thales and MAOSCO solution enables easy implementation of smart card issuance through branches with minimal impact on existing host systems. While the traditional method of card issuance is from a central, well-secured bureau and then via post to the recipients, many banks need the ability to issue smart cards from their branches.

For banks and other financial institutions branch issuance presents three powerful customer relationship management (CRM) opportunities; Firstly the ability to avoid ‘not arrived’ cards that are fraudulently intercepted en route to the account holder and at the same time allow the account holder to select their own memorable PIN, secondly to quickly and efficiently replace lost or stolen cards within the branch, maximising account transaction opportunities, and thirdly to provide added value application services in-branch, such as the loading of loyalty services.

The bank can maintain total control over customer records as they never have to leave the bank’s data preparation facility in an unencrypted form. The card blanks are electronically secured and cannot be enabled fraudulently. Further, they do not need to be stored in the branch for collection as the process of cryptographically downloading information and completing the card body takes only a few moments. The issuing bank also saves costs in generating secure PIN mailers and the processes that support them.

The increased complexity of smart card issuance compared to magnetic stripe has made the in-branch card issuance process far more difficult for banks to implement. To assist with this and following on from Thales’ enormous success of its Guide to EMV Migration, ACI Worldwide, Thales and MAOSCO, have created a guide to in-branch smart card issuance. The guide to accompany the solution addresses all of the key challenges and considerations that banks must take into account and describes a typical system implementation.

Download a copy of the In-branch smart card issuance guide here:

Rainier Brueren, Managing Director, ACI Smart Card Division said: “Since 1996, ACI has been at the forefront of the migration to EMV for banks in both the acquiring and issuing arenas. With the In-Branch Issuance solution, ACI builds on that success and offers banks an immediate opportunity to increase their levels of customer service. The requirement for branch personalisation is not just limited to the EMV market and we are pleased to be able to fulfil that need as well”.

Paul Meadowcroft, head of the transaction security activities of Thales, said: “In many parts of the world, in-branch card issuance is the norm. As well as seeing increased interest outside of these environments due to the obvious benefits of such an approach, we are also witnessing some concerns about how to effectively deploy a smart card based in-branch card issuance system. Produced in association with leading industry players, the guide helps banks understand all the benefits and challenges involved and offers important advice on how to successfully deploy such a system.”

Tim France-Massey, the Business Development Director of MAOSCO, said: “Thanks to the cooperation of the vendor team we've been able to demonstrate a tangible business benefit for card issuers that is enabled by one of the unique selling points of MULTOS. We look forward to the revolution in convenience this solution will bring for cardholders”.

About ACI Worldwide
Every second, every day, more then 500 organisations around the world rely on ACI solutions to power online payment and smart card processing systems in both emerging and traditional channels. More customers use our software to manage higher payment volumes, of greater diversity, across more platforms and geographies, than any other provider in our field.

In the emerging smart card market, ACI has become a major player by providing large-scale EMV solutions and participating in multi-application smart card projects in a variety of markets. Since 1975, ACI has provided software solutions to the world's innovators.

Successful smart card migrations demand more than just implementing the right product solutions. To this end, ACI offers a comprehensive programme of guidance, education and support to help organisations through their migration.

The modular design of ACI Smart Chip ManagerTM and its parallel processing capabilities allow the solution to grow as an organisation’s business grows. The system operates independently of card technology and enables the management of mixed card populations to protect infrastructure investments.

Visit ACI Worldwide on the Web at www.aciworldwide.com and at stand 3C27 during Cartes 2004.

About Thales
Thales is an international electronics and systems group, serving defence, aerospace, services and security markets. The group employs 61,500 people worldwide and generated revenues of 10.6 billion in 2003.

Operating in three main markets covering e-security, card payment and network security, Thales’ e-Security activities address the business, government and finance industries’ need for cryptographic security products and solutions. Over half of the world’s banks, together with the majority of the busiest exchanges, currently use Thales technology. For more than 20 years the company has been at the forefront of security and payment technology, co-operating and contributing to set the industry standards used for financial transactions and e-commerce globally. Thales e-Security activities offer a wide range of security solutions to protect Government and Defence critical information infrastructures, thereby positioning the company as a leading worldwide supplier of certified network security products.

Visit Thales at stand 4J13 during Cartes 2004.

About MULTOS & MAOSCO
MULTOS is a highly secure multi-application smart card operating system specification supporting a wide range of applications including EMV,ID and other value-added applications. This open standard is managed and developed by MAOSCO - a consortium of the world’s leading smart card companies - and is the only commercial operating system to attain the security requirements of ITSEC E6-high. (ITSEC is an independent and rigorous security evaluation scheme supported by more than 14 countries worldwide, whose results are openly published.) Third party software developers provide a broad catalogue of MULTOS applications and value-added services for card users and issuers that can be deployed consistently across all implementations of MULTOS. Over 25 million MULTOS smart cards had been shipped in 27 countries at Q4 2003, in projects ranging from banking, National Identity, Campus, Secure ID and Transit.

For more information about MULTOS, visit www.multos.com and at stand 3C1 during Cartes 2004.

Contact details for ACI Worldwide

John Walker
ACI Worldwide
+44 (0) 1923 812741
walkerjo@aciworldwide.com

Jenny Taylor
Write Image
+44 (0) 20 7959 5526
jenny@write-image.co.uk

Contact details for Thales

Claire Topping
Thales e-Security
+44 (0)1844 204156
claire.topping@thales-esecurity.com

Scott McLean
Hotwire
+44 (0) 20 7608 4643
scott.mclean@hotwirepr.com

Contact details for MAOSCO
pr@multos.com,
fax: +44 (0)207 557 5435,
www.multos.com