Information and communication permanent secretary Bitange Ndemo said that only 62 percent of the estimated 20 million subscribers had so far complied with the government directive with the initioal deadline expected to expire on Friday.

And as is oftentimes the case with Kenyans when it comes to procrastination, despite having a whole month to register their SIM cards most of them jammed registration centers to beat the deadline.

But the government came to their rescue with a 31 day extension notice.

Market leader Safaricom registered the highest number of SIM cards at 71 percent of its 12 million customers while Zain was second with 54 percent of its 1.03 million subscribers registered according to Ndemo.

The government is creating the register of SIM card owners with names and personal details to help authorities rein in the growing high-tech crime rate.

Ndemo said it was now criminal for telecommunication operators to register new subscribers without identification documents.

Last year, President Mwai Kibaki directed mobile phone operators to register their customers to boost national security and reduce phone related crimes.

The hope of Home Trust is to completely covert to the EMV. The selection of Gemalto comes with microprocessor payment cards as well as data preparation and personalization. In addition Gemalto is providing training on EMV conversion to Home Trust associates.

The coffee bar chain unveiled the payment method at Marlyebone station last week, the last branch to adopt the technology.

Customers will be able to pay for goods worth up to £15 by simply holding their card over the provided terminal, eliminating the need to enter a PIN code.

Jon Hassall, chief operating officer at AMT Coffee, claimed contactless payments will be key to future transaction methods.

He said: “Before April this year, none of our branches accepted debit or credit cards but the speed of contactless persuaded us it was a must have for a coffee retailer in busy railway stations.”

The firm was previously reluctant to deploy card payments in its busy airport and railway station stores as it was feared it would take too long to process the transactions.

Source: squirdcard.com

The smart cards will be introduced in August on 30 Wessex Connect bus routes into and around the city.

Bristol City Council said they were also hoping to roll the scheme out to First Bus services across the west of England in March 2011.

Card users will get a 16% discount on fares and will be able to pre-pay for up to £50 worth of tickets.

Councillor Gary Hopkins, the council’s cabinet member for transport, said the trial had been run “on a shoestring” but that a £1.1m award from central government meant the necessary technology could now be introduced.

The scheme has been trialled with Wessex Connect and the University of the West of England (UWE) Ulink buses.

‘Save time’
Mr Hopkins said: “They’re being used by staff at the moment, ensuring any glitches are knocked out of the system.”

The councillor added the cards, which are similar to London’s Oyster Card but are yet to be given a name, would “have a huge affect on fares” and “save huge amounts of time”.

“Having those cards, getting them widely used, will be absolutely a vital factor in improving transport across the city,” he said.

“We’ve got promises from First Bus to actually introduce across the west of England from next March and now obviously we need to make certain that progresses.

“For the moment they’re called smart cards, but we’d like to hear from people what they think would be the right name.”

Ian Pollard, from Wessex Connect, said: “We are proud to be at the forefront of developing better access to bus services in the south-west by embracing new technology to offer improved ticket and pass options for people to get better value.”

He said passengers would be able to top-up value on their card on buses and, in future, at a network of shops.

A spokesman for First said it supported the scheme and was working with the council to implement it.

He said: “We continue to discuss the introduction of smart card enabled ticket machines with all local councils throughout the region and the availability of public funding to facilitate this.”

CardEase Mobile will be available this fall in the UK and is being tested at several UK-based acquiring banks. It also will be available in the fall in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, Russia and Asia, according to CreditCall.

CardEase Mobile, to be accredited by UK acquiring banks this fall, will support chip-and-PIN, magnetic stripe and card-not-present transactions. The application also will support such functions as end-of-day reporting, refunds and void transactions. CardEase declined to comment on which UK banks but noted the company also is seeking accreditation with Moneris Solutions, a Canada-based bank.

The service will include a separate Bluetooth-linked wireless PIN pad that merchants can pair with a smart phone. The PIN pad will enable merchants to conduct both chip-and-PIN and mag-stripe transactions, a spokesperson from CreditCall tells PaymentsSource. The PIN-pad will be available to purchase from various distributors later this year. CreditCall declined to comment on specific distributors.

The application reads the information from the consumer’s PIN entered through the separate PIN pad. The data are then sent encrypted over a wireless network to the merchant’s bank for authorization. Merchants also may send customers transaction receipts via e-mail, text message or printed out from an option printer.

To use CardEase, merchants pay a service rate to their acquirer or processor, a distributor fee, an application fee and a fee for the hardware. CreditCall declined to comment on the exact amount of each fee.

Merchants may purchase the application for a Blackberry phone and eventually other smart phones such as Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Nokia’s Symbian, in 2011, the spokesperson says. Once merchants install the application, they must register with CreditCall to have the application connected to a credit card merchant account to enable live transactions.

Merchants also will must set up a credit card merchant account with a bank certified with CreditCall. Merchants that already have an account to accept credit and debit cards do not need to set up an additional credit card merchant account.

CreditCall’s CardEase Mobile may be the first application designed for chip-and-PIN transactions, but it is not the first payment application developed for mobile merchants. In fact, mobile merchants and even brick-and-mortar retailers in the U.S. have available a wide range of similar applications and hardware.

However, there are not many payment applications like CardEase outside the U.S., Adil Moussa, an analyst for Boston-based Aite Group, tells PaymentsSource. “CreditCall is well-positioned in chip-and-PIN acceptance areas to take advantage of merchants who want mobile payment applications,” he says.

Though smart-phone applications give merchants an easy way to accept payments, some merchants may have to decide if “it is worth it to buy all the separate pieces or easier to use a wireless terminal,” Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group, a Centennial, Colo.-based consulting firm, tells PaymentsSource. Some mobile merchants may find wireless terminals meet their needs better than mobile applications.

About Network International:

Established in 1994, Network International LLC is the largest acquirer and one of the leading payment solutions providers in Region geared to meet the needs of Banks, Financial institutions, and large and individual retailers. It is a Principal Member of Visa International and MasterCard International for the UAE, offering customers the most comprehensive range of payment products and services in the Gulf and MENA region, for both the Issuing and Acquiring segment of the card payment industry. Offerings include credit and debit card processing services, ATM management and monitoring, merchant acquiring plus consumer finance applications. Network International provides consultancy services ranging from planning and designing, to developing of new card and consumer finance products and services.

Network International is the first independent vendor certified by both Visa & MasterCard for card payments in the Middle East. It is UAE’s largest payment acquirer for Credit & Debit Cards and the largest third-party processing vendor which is capable of providing banks, the retail industry and financial institutions with complete EMV certified solutions as they migrate to EMV Smart Card technology.

The launch of this bio-sourced SIM card demonstrates the operator’s commitment to introduce innovative products in the market. It is also the company’s policy to reduce the impact on the environment due to its activities. Bio-plastics material that is derived from plants such as corn, potato starch or sugarcane is utilized for the manufacture of these SIM card body. It is easily compostable and recyclable and no toxic fumes are emitted during its incineration.

Eco-friendly products in Gemalto’s expanded portfolio are utilized by customers such as telecom, banking and governments throughout the world. Gemalto’s eco-friendly product portfolio demonstrates the company’s commitment to reduce its impact on the environment. The bio-sourced SIM card is part of this portfolio.

Philippe Vallée, Executive Vice President, Telecommunication Business Unit, Gemalto, said that both SFR and Gemalto have a common goal to introduce new innovative eco-friendly products in the market. Bio-sourced cards will be distributed by SFR in spring 2010.

NFC is a short-range, high-frequency, wireless communications technology that enables the exchange of data between devices over some 10 centimetres (four inches) apart. The technology could enable the growth in the market for contactless credit cards and other forms of identification and transaction.

The technology is already in use in two towns in Ireland – Dundalk and Tuam – as well as across 32 Insomnia Cafes around Ireland, not to mention various Londis, Munchies and Eddie Rockets outlets via former Alphyra CEO John Nagle’s firm, Zapa Technology.

According to the global head of mobile products at consumer electronics giant Samsung, Chris Evans, NFC will represent a step change in data communications – not to mention commerce – as we know it.

NFC was in plenty of evidence at the GSM Association’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Everything from proving identity cards to buying coffee utilised NFC.

First-ever SIM-based NFC payments pilot
GSMA, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Telefonica, and Visa, together with Giesecke & Devrient, Ingenico, ITN International and La Caixa, announced the arrival of contactless mobile payments at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year. The companies unveiled the result of months of collaboration and have brought the first-ever SIM-based NFC payments pilot to Mobile World Congress.

The participating companies provided more than 400 NFC handsets to guests for use at the congress. The Samsung Star NFC handsets contain Telefonica SIM cards from O2 pre-loaded with €60 airtime credit, as well as a La Caixa Visa Mobile Payment Application. Participants used their NFC phones to pay for food and drink up to a value of €75 at more than 30 merchant locations around the congress.

Evans showed me how NFC content could be accessed instantly by a handset by placing the phone directly over my identity badge. The device was able to grab various data sets, including name and email address.

“We are investing a huge level of R&D in NFC,” Evans said. “This year, NFC will gain momentum and over the next five years we see it becoming more widespread than even contactless payment cards because of the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices.

“The key is getting the general ecosystem working together. It requires the banks, credit card issuers like Visa, and of course various handset manufacturers and technology providers working together.

“In five years’ time we see people carrying NFC on their mobile devices rather than credit cards.”

“We are hoping that this year there will be an all-in effort to see the commercial launch of NFC.”

NFC in Ireland
NFC is already operating commercially in Ireland and is enabling towns like Dundalk and Tuam to help local merchants retain trade in the town by providing NFC-based loyalty cards that at present punters can simply stick onto the back of their mobile handsets.

“Some 80pc of regular loyalty customers at Insomnia coffee shops now have our Zapatag on their handsets,” explained Donal McGuinness of Zapa Technology who added the company has made NFC available as an app on the iPhone and the BlackBerry smart phone.

“In a couple of years we envisage all tickets for things like concerts and football matches being sent over the air by NFC to allow people entry to events. We see contactless credit and debit cards being stored on mobile devices and people using their train and plane tickets this way.”

McGuinness’ colleague John Wall said he saw the use of NFC tags as a transition until the technology becomes more prevalent in smart phones. Zapa’s technology currently features as apps on all smart-phone devices, bar the Android at present.

“The next five years will be all about building out the ecosystem, getting the banks on side and ensuring that this secure, accurate form of payment gets widely adopted. We feel by helping Irish towns retain trade we’re off to a good start,” Wall said.

The attack uses a fake chip card connected with wires to custom electronics, a computer with specially designed software, and a stolen EMV chip & PIN card. The fake card and equipment sit between the stolen card and the point-of-sale terminal; the attack fools the terminal into thinking that the correct PIN had been presented and makes the stolen card believe that no PIN was required.



The Smart Card Alliance has reviewed the hack along with other industry organizations and concluded that widespread implementation of this attack is unlikely and that there is no evidence that the attack described has happened in the real world.


These conclusions are supported by the following points:

The attack requires the use of a stolen EMV card that has not yet been reported as stolen; this limits the scalability of this type of fraud since it must be done with one card at a time and in a potentially short window of time.
The combination fake card and stolen chip & PIN card cannot be used in an ATM for a cash withdrawal, as ATMs rely on an online PIN verification.
The fraud requires using a fake chip card with wires coming out of it, running up the sleeve of the fraudster and connecting to a hidden circuit board, computer and stolen EMV card, making detection likely at an attended merchant point-of-sale.
The attack is technically difficult, requiring highly sophisticated software and customized hardware that could only be created by individuals with extensive knowledge of EMV protocols.
Countermeasures are already available, either in EMV, within payment system products and networks, or within issuer host systems.
Electronic audits of data from suspected transactions would protect cardholders and merchants from responsibility for fraudulent charges made to their card with this type of attack, if reported properly.
Additionally, such an attack would not compromise the smart card as the PIN would still remain secure inside the card.