American Express Co. has joined GlobalPlatform Inc., an international trade group focused on developing standards and applications for smart cards.
The Redwood City, Calif., organization said Tuesday that Amex has become a full member and would play an active role in its card initiatives.
Amex's initial focus will be on mobile payments, GlobalPlatform said.
The financial company is also one of the four payments companies that back EMVCo., the standards group that maintains the EMV data security standard for card transactions; EMVCo. and GlobalPlatform are working together to develop standards for handling card data securely through mobile phones. MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc. and the Japanese card company JCB Co. are the other payments companies that back EMVCo.
Amex was the first U.S. payments company to offer smart cards. Its Blue card, introduced in 1999, featured a chip, but for several years the chip had little functional purpose.
Gwenn Bezard, a research director at the research and advisory firm Aite Group LLC of Boston, said that Smart cards are widely used in other countries where the EMV standard is taking off. The security format, often called chip-and-PIN, uses cards with built-in microchips and requires consumers to enter a PIN when they make purchases, and is widely viewed as more secure than traditional magnetic-stripe cards.
"The rest of the world is slowly but surely migrating to chip-and-PIN," Bezard said.
However, payments executives have said they do not expect EMV to be adopted in the United States, largely because of the investment required to deliver smart cards to users and install smart-card readers at merchant locations.
"The U.S. may not migrate to chip-and-PIN tomorrow, but you want to be watching it and the best way to do that is by participating in trade groups," he said.
Susan Hillel, Amex's senior vice president of global network operations, said in GlobalPlatform's press release that joining the trade group would help it "deliver innovative and convenient payment solutions" to users.
