The News

Industry Leader Honored as Outstanding Supplier Organization for MicroPass Platform

14/05/2008

CTST 2008, ORLANDO, Florida, May 14th, 2008 – In yet another display of its industry leadership, INSIDE Contactless, the world leader in advanced contactless microprocessor platforms, today received the Smart Card Alliance 2008 Outstanding Smart Card Achievement (OSCA) Award for Outstanding Supplier Organization for its MicroPass® contactless payment microprocessor product suite.  The award, announced at the Smart Card Alliance 2008 Annual Conference held in conjunction with CTST 2008, was presented to INSIDE Contactless for its outstanding achievements and exceptional leadership in the North American smart card marketplace, and coincides with the MicroPass platform achieving a milestone of powering 50 million bank cards from over 25 card issuers worldwide, earning the company the position of global market share leader for contactless bank cards.

Developed from the ground up as a complete contactless payment platform, the MicroPass platform is easier than other products for manufacturers to implement in card designs.  It offers more flexibility for card issuers, retailers, co-brand partners, merchants and card associations to create innovative marketing and loyalty programs that include a contactless payment component in a range of convenient form factors.  The MicroPass 4002 is the first and only certified Discover Zip contactless payment core technology for cards, while the MicroPass 4003 supports both MasterCard PayPass and Visa payWave and is the first and only certified Visa Streamline Online qVSDC implementation for contactless payments.

“INSIDE pioneered contactless technology, offering the first chips with ‘full-stack’ integration that combined an operating system and application layer on the chip, an innovation that enabled price breakthroughs and supply chain efficiencies, and helped drive rapid consumer adoption,” said Charles Walton, executive vice president of payments for INSIDE Contactless.  “We are thrilled to be honored with this award and the recognition of our achievements in this exciting market.”

According to Walton, by efficiently aligning the supply chain for contactless card products, INSIDE was able to deliver a complete solution—inlay deliveries based upon MicroPass, type approval support, enablement of pre-personalization infrastructure, and support in issuer/bureau personalization integration—which simplified card manufacturing operations.  Efficiency resulted in lower costs, shorter lead times and enabled manufacturers to most effectively support bank card issuers.  INSIDE has also helped the industry drive adoption of contactless payments by working directly with bank card issuers, providing educational support and resulting in rapid growth of contactless payment card deployments.

“INSIDE exemplifies consistent high achievement as a supplier, bringing its core expertise to contactless payment solutions that have made significant impact on the smart card industry,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance.  “We are pleased to be able to present this 2008 OSCA Award to INSIDE Contactless for its exceptional leadership and contribution to this industry.”

INSIDE actively participates in many of the industry’s most important alliances, including the Smart Card Alliance.  Here, INSIDE actively participates at the leadership level and contributes to work group activities in the areas of payments, transit, mobile, and security.  INSIDE has also co-chaired the Contactless Payments Council, been actively involved in transit, mobile and security work groups, and has contributed to white papers and other SCA documents.  Finally, INSIDE has been a regular sponsor of SCA events and also a sponsor of SCA paid-for research.