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Oberthur Technologies on Tuesday launched a product designed to make it easier for financial institutions to issue EMV-enabled chip cards, Martin Ferenczi, managing director of the Americas region for Oberthur's card systems division, tells CardLine Global. Banks that buy the France-based card vendor's "EMV-in-a-Box" will receive on-site consultation, training, project management and technical aid, all designed to enable an EMV-migration plan within 12 weeks of the project's start. The product is meant "for a financial institution that is not very aware of how EMV works," Ferenczi says. "It removes the need to get a vast technical knowledge" of the fraud-prevention smart card standard found in all major markets of the world except for the United States. The product is not exclusively designed for U.S. issuers. It also is designed for banks in areas of Europe, notably Eastern Europe, and other regions where EMV migration efforts have just started, Ferenczi says. No orders for the product have yet come from U.S. issuers, but Ferenczi expects the U.S. to migrate toward EMV as fraud moves from chip cards to magnetic stripe cards and as more U.S. travelers find their cards rejected in countries that have adopted EMV.
