Oberthur Technologies SA is offering a consulting service to help banks implement the EMV Integrated Circuit Card Specification.
The Paris smart card maker said its EMV-in-a-Box service, announced Tuesday, enables financial companies to migrate to the security format within 12 weeks.
Oberthur is offering the service to banks in the United States, which is not using EMV, and in areas of Europe, notably Eastern Europe, and other regions where EMV migration efforts have just started, according to Martin Ferenczi, the managing director of the Americas region for Oberthur's card systems division.
The service is meant "for a financial institution that is not very aware of how EMV works," Ferenczi said. "It removes the need to get a vast technical knowledge" of the fraud-prevention standard that is already common abroad.
EMV-in-a-Box includes on-site consultation, training, project management and technical aid.
Though no U.S. financial companies have agreed to use the service, Ferenczi said he expects the U.S. to migrate to the security format as fraudsters shift their efforts away from EMV cards to the more vulnerable magnetic stripe cards that are still used in this country, and as more U.S. travelers find their it difficult to use their cards in countries that have adopted EMV.
U.S. financial companies have resisted shifting to EMV, which would require banks to issue new cards and merchants to install new terminals.
