JSE listed AST Group has acquired Nemotech for an undisclosed sum, marking the group`s entry into the smart card solutions business.
Smart card solutions provider Nemotech will trade as AST Smart Card Solutions, part of AST`s Identification & Security Solutions.
"Interest in smart cards from the banking and financial sectors has picked up following chip-card announcements by American Express and Visa International," says AST Smart Card Solutions MD Kobus Duvenhage.
"We see a growth in smart cards as online security requirements are expected to boost card demand, and improved technology are rewriting the cost-benefit arguments that have traditionally weighed against smart cards."
Nemotech is the exclusive licence holder of Touch Technology International`s CardTouch and PocketServer platforms for sub-Saharan Africa.
AST says CardTouch is the industry`s only second-generation smart card/electronic purse and back-end processing platform, which can be leveraged across multiple vertical markets by incorporating the common functionality for all smart card systems. However, AST Smart Card Solutions is card and hardware independent, it adds.
CardTouch integrates multiple card, device and payment types into a back-end transaction processing system. On the front end, Touch Technology`s PocketServer provides a multi-application platform for smart cards, smart tokens and mobile devices. PocketServer turns smart devices into smart personal databases, AST says.
"Multi-application cards allow for a value-added approach by including such things as online authentication, including biometrics and access, and customer loyalty programs," says AST Identification & Security Solutions MD Danie Bischoff.
"This reduces the cost per application that the card is used for and provides merchants the incentive to invest in the terminals needed to read the cards."
AST says that apart from financial transactions, one of the major potential uses for smart cards is in network security, particularly as companies build public key infrastructures.
Cards are seen as the ideal vehicle for carrying digital certificates and private keys, it adds.
AST Smart Card Solutions will work closely with AST Security Management with regard to network security.
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