Alaric drives contactless MasterCard in Europe
July 18, 2007
LONDON - Alaric Systems Ltd., supplier of technology and fraud detection solutions for card payments, announced that its authentic-authorization and switching solution is being used to enable a contactless EMV credit-card pilot in Europe.
According to a news release, the pilot is for a new-generation MasterCard PayPass card. The scheme, introduced by Switzerland-based card-issuer and acquirer Aduno Group, comes several months ahead of the contactless card roll out expected to begin this fall in London.
The PayPass card can be used to make small payments of up to 40 Swiss francs without the purchaser having to enter a PIN or sign a transaction slip. Contactless terminals facilitate payments by receiving and processing encrypted transaction data transmitted from a chip using radio frequency identification technology.
Aduno will be piloting the new payment card in Zurich, Lausanne and Lugano, Switzerland, from July until September. Following the trial, card is expected to be rolled out across the entire country.
The pilot kicked off in March at a McDonald's in Zurich.
"We were familiar with the software solution which Alaric has developed and we also knew that they had the knowledge within the company to support us in our new venture," said Andrea Maffioretti, head of IT merchant services for Aduno.