Gemalto Teams Up with Venezuelan Bankcard Market Leaders to Accelerate EMV Migration

Gemalto Teams Up with Venezuelan Bankcard Market Leaders to Accelerate EMV Migration

Caracas, Venezuela, Jan 30, 2009–Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, announced today that it is teaming up with two banking technology leaders to help banks in Venezuela move to a new, high-tech smart credit card that will better protect their customers from fraud and identity theft. Gemalto publicly declared an exclusive business alliance with Corporación Cardtech, Venezuela’s largest supplier of magnetic stripe bank cards, and Newtech Solutions, a consulting and technical support organization that specializes in EMV. EMV is the global standard for banking cards, supported by all of the major international credit cards brands.

Under the new agreement, banks in Venezuela working with Corporación Cardtech and Newtech Solutions will have access to expertise, consulting services, smart cards and technology from Gemalto, the world’s leading provider of EMV cards (Source: Frost & Sullivan and Nilson Report). The partners estimate that eight million EMV cards will be issued in the first year, starting in June 2009. Close to 16 million debit and credit cards are currently in use in Venezuela.

“By applying our extensive global experience in EMV cards and working closely with our partners in Venezuela, we can make migration much easier for issuers,” said Dimas Gomez, Marketing manager for Finance segment for Gemalto Latin America. “We will provide everything necessary to effectively personalize, issue and accept EMV on a large scale.”

Venezuelan banks are faced with constantly increasing card fraud, mostly due to illegal copying of magnetic stripe information to create “cloned” credit cards. The problem, that affects all of Latin America, has led to a liability shift which penalizes card issuers and merchants that do not issue or accept EMV cards. This liability change for non-EMV cards becomes effective in Venezuela starting July 2009.

EMV cards embed a microprocessor and software with security features that work together with the payment transaction authorization network to prevent card fraud and identity theft and better protect consumers. Unlike with magnetic stripe only cards, smart cards based transactions cannot be easily cloned, which is a primary source of fraud throughout Latin America. The software loaded in EMV microprocessor cards not only increases security, it opens the door for banks to deploy other exciting programs for their customers, such as loyalty schemes that enable merchants to offer rewards to their best customers automatically when they shop at their store.

About Corporación Cardtech

Corporación Cardtech is Venezuela’s leading company in the area of creation, development and marketing of technology products, solutions and services for means of payment for telecom companies (pre-paid Scratch cards, GSM-SIM cards) and financial institutions (financial cards, points of sale and transaction applications). Corporación Cardtech will provide business service to national banks in deploying the best project management practices to ensure the bank’s successful transition to EMV technology.

About Newtech Solutions Group

Newtech Solutions Group is a Venezuelan company created to represent multinational corporations in the marketing of their products in Latin America, as well as to develop technology solutions based on these products. It specializes in the development and support of technology solutions based on electronic micro-chips, the design of solutions for process systemization aimed at increasing the productivity of businesses in various areas, such as transport, electronics, communications, health, governmental entities and the financial sector.

About Gemalto

Gemalto (Euronext NL 0000400653 GTO) is the world leader in digital security with 2008 annual revenues of €1.68 billion, and 10,000 employees operating out of 75 offices, research and service centers in 40 countries.

Gemalto is at the heart of our evolving digital society. The freedom to communicate, travel, shop, bank, entertain, and work–anytime, anywhere–has become an integral part of what people want and expect, in ways that are convenient, enjoyable and secure.

Gemalto delivers on the growing demands of billions of people worldwide for mobile connectivity, identity and data protection, credit card safety, health and transportation services, e-government and national security. We do this by supplying to governments, wireless operators, banks and enterprises a wide range of secure personal devices, such as subscriber identification modules (SIM) in mobile phones, smart banking cards, electronic passports, and USB tokens for online identity protection. To complete the solution we also provide software, systems and services to help our customers achieve their goals.

As the use of Gemalto’s software and secure devices increases with the number of people interacting in the digital and wireless world, the company is poised to thrive over the coming years.

For more information please visit http://www.gemalto.com.

Press Contacts LATAM

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Chuky Parés Reyna
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Gemalto
Natalia Fakhri
Tel: (+ 55 21) 3431 3935
natalia.fakhri@gemalto.com