Oberthur Technologies, one of the world's leading smart card suppliers, and Dyetron S.A, a provider of smart card-based technology solutions for the transportation, communications, government and financial sectors, announced a partnership to provide EMV cards in Colombia.
EMV (Europay MasterCard VISA) chip & pin is the global electronic transaction standard that outlines interaction between chip (smart) cards and merchant terminals to ensure worldwide inter-operability.
"Dyetron's local personalization center combined with Oberthur's global expertise in EMV card manufacturing and personalization creates the ideal synergy to deliver EMV migration in Colombia," said Arturo Sesana, General Manager for Dyetron.
Colombia's Superintendencia Financiera has imposed a January 1, 2010 deadline for issuers and merchants to migrate to EMV payment because of rising fraud rates from standard magnetic stripe debit cards. After this deadline, the liability over fraudulent transaction rests solely on the party that hasn't upgraded to EMV -- whether it be the issuer or the merchant.
"This venture will leverage Oberthur's experience gained from the successful EMV migration of over 200 customers worldwide to meet the needs of local banks and credit unions in Colombia," said Martin Ferenczi, Managing Director of the Americas Region of the Card Systems Division, of Oberthur Technologies.
Dyetron will utilize Oberthur's end-to-end common personalization system and will be fully integrated in the worldwide Oberthur network of over 30 services centers. This will allow local banks to migrate seamlessly to EMV and international banks to easily deploy their EMV strategy in Colombia.