Developers who base the design of their smart card readers on this device will be able to more quickly and easily attain EMV level one type approval for their products, an important symbol of quality throughout the industry.

"EMV certification has become a universally recognized seal of approval for smart card readers, even for those used in applications other than payment and provides a powerful indication that a product has achieved the highest level of quality," said Christian Fleutelot, general manager and executive vice president digital security for INSIDE Secure. "Now manufacturers have a trusted source for high-quality, EMV-compliant smart card reader ICs they can have confidence in for use in a broad range of contact and contactless reader applications requiring EMV certification."

The new INSIDE smart card reader microcontroller complies with the EMV 2000 version 4.3 standard and is also pre-certified to all relevant industry standards, including PC/SC, ISO 7816, GIE-CB, GSM, USB FS 2.0 and WHQL. In addition, the AT90SCR200 delivers superior communications speeds and features 100 per cent byte code compatibility with all current INSIDE AT90SCR-series smart card reader microcontrollers.

The EMVCo level one type approval process tests compliance with the electromechanical characteristics, logical interface and transmission protocol requirements defined in the EMV Specifications. Type approval provides an increased level of confidence that interoperability and consistent behavior between compliant applications have been achieved.

The INSIDE AT90SCR200 may be used to create a bridge between a contact or contactless smart card (when used with an RF interface) or USB smart card and the host processor in a variety of card-based systems, including contact USB PC-Link smart card readers, smart keyboard, PinPad, embedded readers and laptop smart card readers and conditional access modules. It features a robust assortment of communication, smart card and peripheral interfaces for greater flexibility for a variety of application needs, including a SPI interface, USART and two-wire interface, a set of GPIOs and a USB 2.0 full speed device and host controller able to support USB smart cards for maximum design flexibility.

The AT90SCR200 also includes the proven INSIDE smart card interface block, an ISO 7816 UART compliant with ISO 7816, EMV2000, GSM, GIE-CB and WHQL 5-, 3-, 1.8-V standards that provides up to an 8-MHz clock to the smart card. A newly designed, highly efficient DC-to-DC converter is able to supply 5V (Class A), 3V (Class B) and 1.8V (Class C) output voltages and all the output current required for EMV level one standard compliance. The AT90SCR200 also includes a hardware AES crypto engine and random number generator and offers 4KB of data SRAM and EEPROM, plus 64KB of flash code memory, including a dedicated boot loader area.