Card Frontiers: Terminal Supplier Deploys New Standard

Europay International said ICL Financial Terminals, a major supplier of point of sale terminals in Europe, is adopting the Europay Open Terminal Architecture.

The OTA software is designed to standardize terminal operation for any card technology or application, meaning it can accept either smart cards or standard magnetic stripe cards.

Europay, which is affiliated with MasterCard, said a major OTA deployment like ICL's is a significant step forward for its effort to upgrade the card acceptance network and easily accommodate technical variations such as those between the Europay-MasterCard-Visa chip card standard and that of the French banking system.

ICL Financial Terminals managing director Arnold Norman said the company is responding to "frequent customer requests" for interoperability among "both traditional magnetic stripe cards and new debit, credit, purse, and loyalty chip card applications."

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