News

Smart Card Alliance establishes Contactless Payments Council

September 5, 2005

PRINCETON JUNCTION, N.J. - The Smart Card Alliance announced in a news release the formation of a Contactless Payments Council. The Council will work to facilitate the adoption of contactless payments in the United States through education programs for consumers, merchants and issuers.

"Contactless payment is an exciting new consumer payments technology that provides convenience, speed and ease of use to consumers and faster transaction times and increased spending per transaction to issuers and merchants," said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "This new council will form one industry voice, including financial payments industry leaders and suppliers and reaching out to involve the merchant community as well. Our goal is to inform and educate the market about the value of contactless payment and work to address misconceptions about the capabilities and security of contactless technology."

The Contactless Payments Council's projects will include Web briefings, workshops at trade shows and the development of white papers and case studies. As a first priority, the council will be developing short briefings to address areas that are widely misunderstood - including how contactless payments deliver additional benefits for payment transactions, what security features are designed into the new contactless payment programs, and what the differences are between RFID technology and the new technologies and methods used to implement secure contactless payments.

The co-chairs of the council are Francine Dubois of Oberthur Card Systems, Wendy Humphrey of First Data Corp. and Mohammad Khan of ViVOtech. The council will be managed by a steering committee composed of a cross section of the financial payments industry and contactless smart chip technology vendors. Steering committee participants include representatives from American Express, Atmel Corp., Axalto, First Data Corp., Gemplus, IBM, JCB International Credit Card Co., MasterCard International, Oberthur Card Systems, SMART System Technologies Inc., VeriFone, Visa USA, and ViVOtech Inc.