London : Thales today announced that its P3™ smart card personalisation preparation process will support the recently released MasterCard M/Chip™ version 4 (M/Chip 4) card application specification on the MULTOS platform. P3 will allow any MULTOS card issuer to upgrade to M/Chip 4 without having to change their card issuing system.

Thales has worked closely with Crédit Mutuel who was the first to take advantage of this new functionality within the ever-improving P3 product, and are currently in the approval phase for their new cards.

The M/Chip programme is MasterCard's approach to global EMV migration of credit and debit payment cards providing fast, reliable and secure transactions. M/Chip 4 offers financial institutions the ability to segment portfolios and control card use in different card acceptance environments. It also features improved card risk management features and facilitates secure, offline debit transactions. MasterCard has also recently launched its Customisation Utility for MULTOS, which gives issuers full control over all the options available within M/Chip 4 MULTOS implementations. Thales is the first vendor to support this Customisation Utility.

Thales has worked with MasterCard for numerous years on smart card technology. As part of this work, Thales has added new functionality to its P3 smart card personalisation preparation process to support the new M/Chip 4 specification. P3 takes the essential cardholder information and the M/Chip 4 profile generated by the MasterCard M/Chip 4 for MULTOS Customisation Utility, and creates the chip card application. The application generation requires the calculation of cryptographic keys, signatures and certificates, together with the cardholder's EMV parameter details according to the instructions specified in the M/Chip 4 profile.

P3 also provides compatibility for previous MULTOS applications such as M/Chip 2. When the file is produced, it is implemented directly by P3 with no further modification required to be M/Chip 4 compliant. Therefore, an issuer that supports M/Chip 2 for MULTOS needs only to update their P3 to be able to produce M/Chip 4 for MULTOS, rather than having to make changes to their personalisation system.

As well as being beneficial to banks wishing to minimise migration costs to M/Chip 4, P3 also supports value added products based on M/Chip 4, including M/Chip Pre-Authorised. This provides the benefits of M/Chip 4 to countries where the use of payment cards is rare because of a lack of the required telecommunications infrastructure needed for online payment transactions.

Paul Meadowcroft, head of transaction security, e-security activities, Thales, said: “The M/Chip 4 card specification is an important step forward in EMV migration as it enables new applications with new features such as transaction logs and pre-authorised debit. The Thales P3 system is an integral part of this migration as it provides both cost benefits and ease of management to banks that are either implementing or contemplating EMV migration.”

Christian Delporte, Vice President, New Product Engineering, MasterCard International, said: “We are thrilled with the level of industry support for MasterCard M/Chip, and for our MasterCard One SMART™ programme overall. Working with leading companies such as Thales, helps ensure that our customer financial institutions are able to migrate to chip technology as easily and cost-effectively as possible.“

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 payment 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 issuer's 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 (CA) operated by associations such as Visa and MasterCard.

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, the e-security business of Thales addresses the business, government and finance industries' needs 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.

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