News Release from: Sagem
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 21 March 2005

Sagem joins Smart Payment Alliance

Sagem has joined Smart Payment Alliance, a new industry-wide association gathering the leading smart card manufacturers in the world.

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Sagem has joined Smart Payment Alliance, a new industry-wide association gathering the leading smart card manufacturers in the world: Axalto, Gemplus International, Giesecke and Devrient, and Oberthur Card Systems. Created in January 2005, this not-for-profit association is dedicated to promote and facilitate the usage of chip-based cards to make payments. Its main objective is to accelerate the transition from traditional magnetic stripe cards to chip-based cards by: promoting the benefits of smart cards for financial institutions; ensuring optimal interoperability between all system components, for both payment and value-added applications; establishing representation on standardisation committees and within payment associations; and describing use cases for value-added applications and, whenever necessary, establishing joint industry specifications for them.

The strategy of the Alliance is to position itself as a partner of EMVCo and to bolster Visa and MasterCard actions on EMV specifications and their implementation.

Aiming to establish consistent specifications, the Alliance members will be involved in very focused workgroups.

Meeting regularly, they will carry out projects to advance interoperability as well as develop additional smart payment solutions, which would be difficult to achieve without the concentration of such industrial knowledge.

'Joining Smart Payment Alliance will enable us to participate to promoting chip-based payment cards, but also to establish international specifications, thus improving both quality and security', says Jean-Paul Jainsky, Managing Director of Sagem's Security Division.

Marc Birkner, Chairman of the Board of Smart Payment Alliance, adds: 'The success of the Smart Payment Alliance relies on a large base of experience in the chip card field'.

'Therefore we welcome new entrants willing to contribute to the objectives'.

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