Zurich, Lugano, 3 March, 2009 – For the past year, Cornèrcard, one of the leading card Issuers in Switzerland, has offered a contactless Visa payWave credit card to its customers. It allows them to pay in glimpse of a second by simply waving the card in front of a reader. In the future, the card users will benefit from more convenience and new possibilities: the LEGIC virtual transponder enhances the same card to a multi-application credential enabling an extended use of the credit card–such as for getting access to leisure or club facilities, using lockers, as an e-ticket for public transport or identification badge for car sharing.

Setting up the LEGIC transponder functionality on the contactless Visa payWave credit card does not require an additional chip. The applications are simply stored in a secure LEGIC virtual multi-application transponder on the micro-controller of the credit card. The LEGIC card-in-card solutions offer this possibility. They meet growing market demand for converged access and payment solutions and allow the integration of applications for personal identification into contactless or dual interface smart cards provided by third parties.

Sandra Alzetta, Senior Vice President Innovation Visa Europe, commented, “Visa payWave is an example of how multi-function smart cards can provide cardholder benefits and this demonstrates Cornèrcard’s leadership and commitment to adopt new and innovative technologies for their cardholders.”

Giovanni Bettoni, Manager of Special Projects at Cornèrcard, believes that innovation is key to offering a good customer service: “Our contactless Visa payWave card will allow our customers not only to use the card for payment transactions, but also to extend the use to access applications – which are growing fast in Switzerland and abroad. LEGIC is the solution which perfectly integrates into our payWave cards, offering our cardholders convenience and new services aside the payment process.”

Urs A. Lampe, Vice President Product Marketing & New Business of LEGIC, is convinced of the innovative power of the solution for the whole industry: “Bringing together the world of payment with the world of physical access and multi-applications bears a lot of potential for card users, issuers and merchants. It makes the world simpler for card holders and creates new opportunities for the use of the cards leveraging contactless multi-applications in leisure and business. This opens a lot of fascinating new schemes and applications. By choosing LEGIC, Cornèrcard has decided to make an important step towards the future and innovative services and lives up to its leading position in terms of the further development of credit card functionalitites.”

About Cornèr Bank Ltd. / Cornèrcard

Founded in Lugano in 1952, Cornèr Bank is a private and independent Swiss banking institution. First in Switzerland to launch the Visa credit card in 1975, Cornèr Bank became a major player in shaping the Swiss credit card industry through on-going innovation. In addition to Visa, Cornèr Bank integrated the MasterCard credit card in its portfolio in 1998. With many years of experience and a host of value-added services, in 2007 Cornèr Bank has reached a key milestone with over 900’000 cards issued. Today, Cornèr Bank is also recognized as a pioneer in the Internet area. It was one of Europe’s first banks to introduce the standards of Secure E-Commerce and has continued to strive for the further development of credit card services in the areas of e-commerce, mobile commerce and contactless credit cards.

For more information, visit http://www.cornercard.ch

About LEGIC® Identsystems Ltd

LEGIC Identsystems Ltd, with headquarters in Switzerland, is the world leader in the design and manufacture of 13.56 MHz contactless smart card technology. The LEGIC product portfolio includes highly integrated LEGIC RF Standard, ISO 15693 and ISO 14443 compliant read/write chip sets, security modules and transponder chips.

LEGIC Identsystems currently works with over 200 external co-operation partners world-wide who offer compatible LEGIC all-in-one-card applications including access control, e-payment, parking, e-ticketing and other multiapplications. More than 1 million readers and over 100 million credentials are successfully integrated in more than 60,000 work and leisure places worldwide.

Contact

Mirko Mandic
Project Manager Marketing Communications
PR & Internet
LEGIC Identsystems Ltd
Tel: +41 44 933 6464
mmandic@legic.com