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HomeSmart Card Talk : February 2011 : From the Alliance Office

Smart Card Talk : February 2011 : From the Alliance Office

From the Alliance Office

Council Report

Alliance Members: Participation in all current councils is open to any Smart Card Alliance member who wishes to contribute to the council projects. If you are interested in participating in any of the active councils, please contact Cathy Medich (cmedich@smartcardalliance.org).

Payments Council

Healthcare Council

Identity Council

Physical Access Council

Transportation Council

Other Council Information

  • Members-only council web pages are available at /councils. These are password-protected pages that contain council working and background documents and contact lists. Each Council area has a separate password since Councils may have different membership policies. If you are a Smart Card Alliance member and would like access to a council site, please contact Cathy Medich ([email protected]).

  • A Council meeting calendar is available on the members-only web site at /members-council-resources.

  • If you are interested in forming or participating in an Alliance council, contact Cathy Medich (cmedich@smartcardalliance.org).

New Members

JCB International Credit Card Company, Los Angeles, CA
Membership level: General
Member Contact: Julie Krueger, Vice President
Member description: International issuer of the JCB credit card

FCI Microconnections, South Burlington, VT
Membership Level: General
Member Contact: Manuel Albers, Regional Business Development & Sales Manager, Americas
Member description: leading manufacturer of connectors for various markets

Emergent, LLC Vienna, VA
Membership level: General
Member Contact: Jessica Wessinger, Marketing Coordinator
Member Description: IT solution provider focused on solving complex business and mission challenges

ACI Worldwide, Elkhorn, NE
Membership level: General
Member Contact: James Schlegal, Sr Product manager
Member description: ACI powers electronic payments for financial institutions, retailers and processors around the world

Czech Technical University of Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
Membership level: University
Member contact: Radek Holy
Member description: computing and information center at Czech Technical university in Prague responsible for the smart card solution

BANRED S.A.; Quito Ecuador
Membership level: SCALA General
Member contact: Pablo Narvaez Vivar, Gerente General
Member description: institution for national financial systems

First Data CAC, Republic of Panama
Membership Level: SCALA General
Member contact: Alfredo Diaz, Director of Financial Services
Member description: processor of electronic payments in the Latin American region

Axway Corporation, McLean, VA
Membership level: General
Member contact: Ajda Berryman, Director Federal Solutions
Member description: a business interaction networks company

Web Site News

Updated web content

News releases from the Alliance

January 2011 web statistics

  • 80,220 visitor sessions for the month
  • 2,587 visitor sessions per day
  • 342,582 total page views for the month
  • 146,323 Industry News items viewed
  • 1,209 Card Reader Catalog items displayed
  • 10,017 PDF downloads
  • 27,618 Product and Service Directory page views

If you have any suggestions on content that you’d like to see on the Alliance web site, please send them to info@smartcardalliance.org.

Alliance in the News

The Alliance has an active communications program to promote industry messages in business, vertical market, and technology publications. Coverage results from both Alliance press releases and interviews with publications writing articles about smart cards. Selected recent coverage is shown below with links to online articles.

February 2011

January 2011

SCA Latin America News

The Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA) project kicked off on October 19, 2004 with the presentation of the Department of Commerce Market Developer Cooperator Program (MDCP) award totaling $288,000 that forms a partnering effort between the International Trade Administration and SCA to develop international trade and support education, training, and resource development for smart cards in Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean Islands. The Alliance staff has held organizing meetings with ITA field office personnel in Mexico and Brazil to discuss ways to bring smart card awareness and education to the government and commercial markets in those countries. The Alliance has also met with ITA personnel based in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and Miami who are in support roles and are prepared to assist the Alliance’s Latin American project.

In July 2005 the Latin America Chapter was launched. Organizations with smart card-related business interests in all Latin American countries and the Caribbean, plus any organization based in North America or internationally with interests in the Latin America markets, should contact Edgar Betts, Manager Business Development–Latin America at 1-954-922-1564 1-954-922-1564 or ebetts@smartcardalliance.org. Memberships are available for Leadership Council, General, Government, and Associate levels.

In May, 2007 the Smart Card Alliance held the first smart card business conference and exhibition in Mexico City. The two day event, developed jointly with the GlobalPlatform organization featured drew more than 200 attendees and featured industry experts from across the Latin American region representing the government ID and security markets and the bank card and mobile payments markets. The event was the first of many future educational and business networking events planned to unite the suppliers and issuers of smart card technology together under the guidance of the Smart Card Alliance Latin American Chapter.

A recent report released by Frost & Sullivan called The Americas Smart Card Market Analysis projected microprocessor smart card shipments of 332.8 million in 2007, and with over a 53 percent annual growth rate projected through 2010. The Latin American smart card market growth is due to many market factors including the migration of mobile telecommunications operators to GSM technology, the migration to EMV in the financial sector, the move to smart transit fare cards and new government and commercial secure identification initiatives. Responding to these market factors, the Smart Card Alliance today announced the formation of a new Latin American chapter to bring together smart card suppliers, partners and customers in order to address the challenges facing smart card deployment in the region.

SCA Latin America Quotes

“The Latin American smart card market is now emerging and could develop more rapidly than other markets by effectively learning from similar smart card initiatives and by forming business partnerships that can quickly deliver successful implementations,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance.

The main mission of the Smart Card Alliance Latin American chapter is in line with the overall goal of the Alliance: to stimulate the understanding, adoption, use and widespread application of smart cards. The Alliance plans to use specific projects such as bi-lingual education programs, market research, advocacy, industry relations and open forums to keep Latin American chapter organization members connected to industry leaders and innovative thought.

“The Smart Card Alliance has played a valuable role in developing the U.S. market in both the public and private sector. Our organization provides an educational and collaborative forum in which all of the stakeholders–manufacturers, issuers and end users–can work together to develop the cross-industry real-world solutions needed to deploy smart card systems. Our organization is uniquely positioned to bring a collective energy and focus to this technology in Latin America,” said Vanderhoof.

SCALA recent Accomplishments

  • Government Information Exchange Mission to Panama:
    The Government Information Exchange Mission to Panama consisted on bringing together consortium SCALA member companies (9) to represent the industry. This included 1 government entity, 3 personalization companies, 2 card suppliers, 2 integrators, and 1 financial network. These companies under the umbrella of SCALA worked with U.S. Commercial Services to meet with key government decision makers from Social Security, Panama Canal Authority, Metro Secretary, Transportation Authority, National Identity Tribune, Passport Authority, Government Innovation Authority, and Ministry of Health. The event lasted 2 days and meeting were made 1-1 with government officials related to their I.D. projects. According to the survey results 100% of all participants considered the Government Information Exchange mission to Panama a success.

  • Cards Brazil Smart Card Technology Presentation Panel:
    Cards 2010 is the biggest conference event in Latin America and has been a key partner for SCALA in the past years. This year SCALA was in charge of conducting the presentations on Smart Card technology. This was done through a panel composed by SCALA’s chairman, vice-chairman, and associate director with the purpose to introduce to market our new Advisory Board, promote membership, and show the Alliance as a resource for impartial information for the market. The presentation was viewed by around 70 attendees.

  • SCALA Technology Panel for CardMeeting 2009:
    CardMeeting is a large conference event in Asuncion, Paraguay focused on Payments in Latin America. In this edition SCALA worked with (2) member organizations of the event, to discuss smart card technology. One of the members was a card manufacturer and the other was a financial network, they each presented their perspective of the value proposition of smart cards for financial transactions. After the event a discussion between Paraguay’s payment commission the owners of the event and SCALA on doing a joint conference in 2010.

  • SCALA/C4 Latin America conference and exhibition:
    The SCALA/C4 Latin America conference was a payment conference that gathered over 200 attendees from Latin America. The event had the participation all major regional issuers and was divided into two separate tracks one for SCALA (technical) and the other for C4 (real world scenarios). SCALA was able to show case the knowledge and knowhow of its members in Latin America. Furthermore, SCALA sold over 50% of the exhibition space of the event.

  • EMV Migration Study and Market Analysis for Mexico and Brazil:
    The EMV migration study was based on a survey conducted by First Annapolis of the major issues, acquirers, and a merchant in Mexico and Brazil to determine the size of the market, growth, drivers, value propositions, experience, deterrents in adoption, and value added. The study was sponsored by Visa Inc. and joined with the knowledge base of SCALA. The study has been presented on several occasions by Visa Inc, and SCALA at different conference events and quoted in different media publications.

  • Publications Agreements with PaymentMedia and CardNews:
    SCALA has established publication agreements with PaymentMedia to publish every two months an educational article on smart cards related to payments. The extent of the agreement has made the column to be called the SCALA educational Column. In addition, SCALA has also developed a publication agreement with CardNews for publication of industry reports and market studies; the magazine has published an extract of the SCALA market study in their year book, published Alliance material on their webpage, and given SCALA space on their e-commerce website. These relationship are expected to grow in the upcoming years has both organization find more ways to collaborate.

  • SCALA Conducted the 1st independent OSCA award ceremony
    SCALA developed its own OSCA award ceremony with its nominees in Panama City, Panama during the SCALA/C4 Latin America conference. The ceremony allowed for SCALA members to feel a sense of autonomy while maintain the traditions of the organization. Furthermore, it presented SCALA as a united organization to the industry with a sense of belonging from the members. Though most of the attendees of the ceremony were not SCALA member’s feedback was received that they wished to have been part of the organization.

  • Congress of Citizen Identification – Certforum International Workshop
    The Congress of Citizen Identification is the biggest N-ID and digital certificate conference in Latin America. The Alliance has historically supported this conference and helped to spread the subject of smart card technology of government ID projects. SCALA helps to bring an international perspective to the conference by providing content, making presentations, conducting workshops etc. This year the president signed into law the RIC, the Brazilian national ID which is a Smart Card. In the past edition of the event SCALA had provided a presentation on the role of government, services, and benefits it could provide with smart cards. This year we will be conducting an exclusive SCALA workshop of LAC governments of PKI and ID.

  • SCALA Participation of the 3rd IT forum–Banrisul
    The IT Forum conference is a venue only focused for Brazil to discuss payment technology and it is attended by over 2000 people. The event is organized by Banrisul, the state bank of Rio Grande do Sur which was the 1st private label EMV card issuer in Latin America and has become the model to follow for Banco do Brasil and Bradesco (2 biggest banks in Brazil) private label Elo. The participation of SCALA on this event has helped to position the organization has the primary source of impartial information about payment technology in the market place. There is a deep partnership and collaboration between SCALA and Banrisul that helps each other symbiotically.

  • Conducted Comercio Movil–SCALA Conference
    SCALA joined forces with Frenquencia to conduct an event in Miami on Mobile Commerce for Latin America. The event is primarily attended by mobile operators and related industries. In the past edition the event was turned into a SCALA event were the alliance coordinated the conference agenda, speakers, presentations, logistics, etc. SCALA also acted the official spoke-person and as the master of ceremony for one of the two days. It has been a challenge to expand the event from a mobile operator perspective to a joint effort between operators and banks. We see great opportunities for this synergy in mobile payments.

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