CPI Card Group (CPI), a global leader in financial and commercial card production and services, and Inside Contactless, a leading provider of advanced, open-standard contactless chip technologies, today announced a partnership to create the industry's first contactless sticker product for open-loop (branded bank card) payments.
CPI anticipates volume production of the stickers, which are based upon INSIDE's new MicroPass payment sticker technology.
INSIDE's sticker technology, which was announced last week, combines the flexible MicroPass 4003 contactless payment processor with a tuned RF antenna in a compact, shielded prelam for payment sticker applications. INSIDE's innovative shielding design improves performance by protecting the chip and antenna inside the sticker from interference that might be caused by the metals and radio signals within mobile phones and other electronic devices. CPI has established a scalable operational process for producing these payment stickers based upon MicroPass prelams delivered from INSIDE. The sticker devices are delivered from CPI already pre-cut from ID1 card devices and pre-personalized to allow for fulfillment using traditional card fulfillment equipment and processes.
"CPI Card Group offers the largest production capacity in North America, and would not be making this kind of investment if we weren't confident of the magnitude of this market opportunity," said Bob Clarke, vice president of sales and marketing at CPI Card Group. "Our project management and manufacturing expertise combined with INSIDE's technology leadership and support has enabled us to go from prototype engineering samples to developing and introducing a real payment sticker product in a very short time."
According to Clarke, CPI Card Group will be delivering its first MicroPass-based payment stickers to a global leader in electronic commerce and payment services, and anticipates orders from several other leading card issuers in North America. Clarke also noted that while the initial payment stickers will provide open-loop payment applications, CPI intends to produce stickers that combine open-loop payments with other applications, such as transit, gift card and loyalty, as well as other closed-loop applications.
"CPI has been a valuable partner of ours for more than four years, and we appreciate their confidence in our technology and their significant efforts to bring this first open-loop payment sticker product to market so quickly," said Didier Serra, general manager and executive vice president of sales, Americas for INSIDE Contactless. "We share CPI's enthusiasm for this technology's potential, and look forward to working with them on future payment and multi-application sticker solutions based on our MicroPass platform."