LONDON - ACI Worldwide, an international provider of transaction processing software, says that its BASE24 platform was successfully used by Barclaycard Merchant Services (BMS) to verify and authorize EMV chip and PIN card transactions throughout the recent chip and PIN trial in Northampton, UK.
More than 200,000 chip-based cards were issued during the six-month pilot with more than 1,000 participating retail outlets, ahead of the UK's national rollout of EMV chip cards by the end of 2004.
According to a news release, BMS played a significant role in the Northampton town trials, working closely with other participating banks and retailers. BMS placed the first live chip and PIN acceptance terminal in March and eventually supplied more than 30 percent of all bank-owned retailer terminals in the trial.
BMS and ACI began working together more than 15 years ago when ACI supported the development of BMS's customized transaction infrastructure, which was built on ACI's core BASE24 technology
The scalability of BASE24 allows BMS to support the increased complexity of processes inherent in EMV chip cards and the greater levels of data transmitted, which is four times greater than that contained on traditional magnetic stripe cards. BASE24 ensures that the processing time of transactions is not increased despite the complexity of chip cards, according to the release.
BMS's transaction infrastructure is in place and ready for national rollout. BMS began a nationwide deployment of chip acceptance terminals in August and intends to go into full-scale rollout of up to 500 terminals a day this month.
Nigel Mapletoft, senior project manager for BMS' chip and PIN program, said in the release, "We have all the back-end processes ready, and now we're concentrating on rolling out retailer terminals. Our rollout program will take some 15 months to complete. During this time we will work closely with ACI to ensure that we have capacity to handle the increased volume of chip transactions."
