Wednesday, 14 May 2008

MasterCard Deploys New Contactless Payment Chip

MasterCard Worldwide with the help of Toshiba Corp. has launched the PayPassTM enabled chip module.

PayPass is a contactless payment feature developed and deployed globally by MasterCard.

With this collaboration MasterCard and Toshiba plan to introduce the chip module in Japanese market by the end of 2008.

Designed using globally interoperable standards (ISO/IEC7816 and ISO/IEC14443), the chip module will be enabled with dual interface (EMV contact/PayPass contactless). The price gap will be kept to the minimum from the single EMV contact interface chip so that companies who currently adopt and deploy EMV contact chip can easily add and issue PayPass enabled cards with costs saved.

Adoption of the chip module is easy for MasterCard customer companies as it is enabled with M/chip 2, which is the most accepted version of M/Chip (application for IC card of MasterCard) among MasterCard customer companies in Japan.

Since its first launch in 2002, PayPass continues to gain strong momentum worldwide.

As of the first quarter of 2008, there are over 28 million PayPass cards and devices and MasterCard PayPass enabled cardholders can enjoy their 'Tap &Go’ shopping in use at more than 109,000 merchant locations worldwide. There are a number of PayPass trials and rollouts currently underway in 24 countries.

"Although contactless payment applications are common in Japan, they are specific to each vendor and therefore inconvenient for consumers since they are not compatible with systems used overseas," said Kazuhiro Kubota, Senior Manager, Smart Card Systems Sales & Marketing Department, Toshiba Corporation.

"PayPass, however, has been widely implemented worldwide by MasterCard, and Toshiba believes that the inherent convenience of the PayPass-enabled chip will make it very popular among Japanese card issuers and cardholders. Together with MasterCard, we look forward to further expanding the global reach of PayPass and delivering greater benefits to customers."

MasterCard and Toshiba plan to launch the new chip module by the end of 2008. While Toshiba undertakes production, MasterCard will expand the chip module equipped cards in the market and further expand PayPass that enables customer more convenient and secure payment.