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Cryptomathic Secures MasterCard and Visa Mobile Wallet Payment Apps

Cryptomathic Secures MasterCard and Visa Mobile Wallet Payment Apps

- 10  July  2013

Responding to increasing demand for mobile payments, e-security expert Cryptomathic has upgraded its EMV flagship issuing solution, CardInk, to enable customers to issue payment applications to smartphones and other mobile devices. The upgrade sees CardInk supporting MasterCard Mobile PayPass™ and Visa Mobile requirements.

The ability to use a mobile device to make a near-field-communication (NFC) payment at the point-of-sale (POS) or to transfer funds remotely is gaining widespread popularity across the globe. The extended functionality of CardInk, Cryptomathic's EMV data preparation solution, allows users to generate the personalisation data for mobile wallet credentials and to securely issue NFC payment applications to smartphones, using the same systems as when issuing physical payment cards. Aligning CardInk to both MasterCard Mobile PayPass and Visa Mobile supports Cryptomathic's customers in delivering mobile wallets that meet the standards of the international payment systems.

The CardInk enhancement is readily available to all customers - including card issuers, personalisation bureaus and data processors - leveraging the existing CardInk infrastructure. This delivers a simplified step towards securely issuing mobile wallets, where all data preparation is conducted within the highly secure CardInk environment, using robust cryptographic key management during the issuing process.

Martin Eriksen, CardInk Product Manager at Cryptomathic, comments: "The industry has been talking about mobile NFC and remote payments for some time, and while we have seen many high profile brands announce their position to make this technology become a mass market reality, the landscape is still evolving and the infrastructure is still developing. Cryptomathic is committed to facilitating end-user payment choice and delighted to support its customers with the ability to easily integrate mobile payments into their offering."

Martin highlights that Cryptomathic's customers are already beginning to utilise CardInk to deliver MasterCard Mobile PayPass and Visa Mobile compliant mobile wallet solutions. This includes a number of leading issuers and payments service providers that are already preparing the first large scale deployments of mobile POS payments in Europe and the US. He concludes: "By advancing CardInk to meet these emerging mobile wallet industry standards, we are empowering our customers to stay ahead of the game and respond rapidly to consumer demands for new payment technologies."

Cryptomathic's CardInk is the only major system that is both hardware vendor and card platform independent, ensuring flexibility for any card issuing environment.  With CardInk, all data generation and preparation takes place inside a tamper resistant HSM, making it one of the safest solutions currently available.