Chips fall into place for smart cards

The shift from magnetic strip credit cards to microchip embedded plastic money just got another nudge forward as MasterCard Canada recently announced that a major payment processor in North America is embracing smart card technology, ITWorld Canada reports.

MasterCard, which recently approved Chase Paymentech Solutions of Dallas to process smart card transactions, said it hopes the processor's client base of 600 000 merchants with nearly one million locations in Canada and the US will speed up widespread migration to chip-based credit cards.

"Chase Paymentech is the first acquirer in Canada to accept MasterCard chip transactions, but we hope to see more adopters as vendors gain confidence on the security and benefits provided by chip technology," said William Giles, VP, advance payments, MasterCard Canada.

Mounting security threats across the world and the positive spill over effects of smart card use in government ID and other applications continue to drive the growth of the global corporate security (physical and logical) smart card market, India Infoline reports.

Successful use in the government sector clearly establishes the potential benefits of smart card systems, leading to improved awareness and adoption levels among the corporate sector. However, lesser-developed countries are yet to overcome challenges related to affordability and lack of IT infrastructure, but are likely to overcome these medium term barriers over the course of the forecast period.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, World Corporate Security (Physical and Logical) Smart Card Market, reveals that revenues in this market totalled $90.4 million in 2005 and could reach $158.5 million by 2011.