MasterCard has selected technology from Amtel and On Track Innovations (OTI) for its PayPass card scheme, in a first step towards large-scale production of contactless chip payment cards in the US.
MasterCard has signalled its plans to incorporate contactless chip technology in its debit and credit cards following successful trials of PayPass in Orlando, Florida. The new solution, in which consumers tap or wave their cards at specially equipped merchant terminals, proved ideal for quick payment environments where speed is essential, such as fast food restaurants, gas stations, drug stores, supermarkets and movie theatres.
MasterCard PayPass functions using a secure contactless microprocessor chip and an antenna. Atmel has been selected to supply the secure contactless microcontroller and has partnered with OTI to provide the contactless solution expertise including the operating system, application support and inlay technology.
The contactless chip used is an 8-bit secure microcontroller from Atmel's AT05SC product family, currently used for a variety of banking applications. The chip features 40KB ROM, 2KB EEPROM, hardware DES and is compliant with lSO-14443B and ISO-7816 industry standards. Atmel and OTI provide the chip in both a contactless module form and in an inlay form, for ease of card embedding by suppliers.