Smart Bits: Europay and Barclays Team Up on Processing

Europay International said it will work with Barclays Bank of London to process Internet transactions using smart cards that meet the EMV standard.

EMV, based on an agreement among Europay, MasterCard International, and Visa International, sets a technical baseline for reading the chips embedded in smart cards.

Europay is moving to make EMV cards usable for Internet commerce wherever a chip card reader is available.

Europay, which is closely allied with MasterCard, said it intends to test EMV cards on the Internet with employees of Barclays' BarclayCard unit for three months. Cardholders could use any computer with a card-reading device, not just their own machines.

The BarclayCard-MasterCard test would set the stage for Internet compatibility of hundreds of millions of EMV cards soon to be shipped, Europay said.

The United Kingdom test is an outgrowth of Europay's participation in C- SET, a French initiative to bring a higher level of card security to electronic commerce. Europay developed SCPP-Smart Card Payment Protocol-to provide transport layer security. It is said to take on-line security up a notch from SSL, the secure sockets layer widely deployed on Web browsers.

"Barclays has been at the forefront of smart card developments for 10 years, culminating in our participation in the U.K.-based EMV trials," said Roger Alexander, the bank's managing director, emerging markets. "We are now able to take chip cards another step forward ... in the new shopping environment provided by the Internet."