The News

Discover® Network certifies Inside Contactless chip for contactless payment cards & devices

13/02/2007

INSIDE Contactless MicroPass L4 intelligent hardware platform first to be certified to support Discover Network contactless payments

Riverwoods, Ill. – February 13, 2007 – Discover Financial Services, a business unit of Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) today announced that Discover Network has certified the MicroPass L4 intelligent hardware platform from INSIDE Contactless. The MicroPass L4 is a contactless chip platform for cards, key fobs and other devices approved for use with Discover Network’s fast, secure, and simple contactless payment network.

“This certification represents another step in Discover Network’s path to providing a comprehensive, user-centric contactless payments solution to consumers and merchants,” said Joby Orlowsky, vice president for Discover Financial Services. “As the first platform certification, the MicroPass L4 provides a market-leading chip platform for use within Discover Network branded card and key fob deployments, while meeting Discover Network’s rigorous standards for security, reliability, and ease of use.”

Discover Network’s certification process ensures that its contactless payment solution properly operates on the MicroPass L4 platform and is also interoperable with Discover-certified payment terminals. Contactless payment transactions utilize short-range proximity technology, enabling cardholders to simply wave their bank card, key tag, or other form of payment device, in front of a contactless payment terminal to pay for their purchase. MicroPass technology, containing the Discover payment application, is designed to be embedded within a Discover branded card or key tag and used for quick transactions in a variety of retail counter environments with the wave of a card.

“Discover Network’s certification of the MicroPass L4 opens the potential for issuer deployments of Discover branded cards,” said Charles Walton, EVP payments of INSIDE Contactless. Inside is ready to support issuers of Discover Network branded cards with a Discover Network compatible solution available from all major card manufacturers.” 

In addition to providing consumers with unparalleled convenience, contactless payment methods offer multiple merchant benefits by enabling them to move more customers through checkout lines in less time, resulting in transaction volume increases of up to 12 percent. And, a recent study showed that contactless payment helps increase average transaction size by up to 30 percent compared to purchases made with cash.

INSIDE’s MicroPass™ is a next-generation microprocessor-based contactless chip platform designed specifically to provide a reliable user experience, flexible application development support, and availability through trusted card manufacturers, in a cost-effective manner. MicroPass uses low power and delivers optimum read distance, flexible card orientation, fast transaction speeds and security consistent with the demands of INSIDE’s most stringent customers. With multi-brand and multi-application support, MicroPass provides card manufacturers and issuers with flexibility and ease of deployment.

About Discover Financial Services
Discover Financial Services LLC, a business unit of Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), operates the Discover Card with more than 50 million Cardmembers, and the Discover Network with more than 4 million merchant and cash access locations. Discover Financial Services also operates the PULSE ATM/debit network, which serves over 4,200 financial institutions and includes almost 250,000 ATMs and approximately 3.4 million POS terminals. For more information, visit www.discovercard.com, www.discovernetwork.com or www.pulse-eft.com.

About INSIDE Contactless:
Founded in 1995, INSIDE is headquartered in France and with global presence in China, Singapore, Poland and the USA. INSIDE is uniquely positioned as the only fabless semiconductor company solely dedicated to the advancement of contactless technology, leveraging one of the industry’s largest intellectual property portfolios. Through strategic emphasis in Contactless Payments and Near Field Communications (NFC), INSIDE has been on a rapid growth track over the past two years with more than 12M chips delivered for contactless payment cards in the US market and a dominant position in driving NFC standardization and pilot deployments.

CONTACT:
Leslie Beyer
224-405-5154
lesliebeyer@discoverfinancial.com