Gemplus has signed a contract for chip card delivery for Portugal's EMV migration with bank-owned payments body Sociedade Interbancária de Serviços (Sibs).
Under the terms of the contract, Sibs will deliver and personalise Gemplus' GemValue EMV cards to Portuguese banks.
Initially used for plain vanilla payments, the new batch of EMV-enabled debit and credit cards may be loaded with loyalty and other added-value programmes at a future date.
Production is currently underway on Sibs' first order of 50,000 GemValue EMV cards. The three-year deal is expected to see the estimated delivery of six to eight million EMV cards.
Gemplus and Sibs have a long-standing chip-based relationship going back to the roll-out of the PMB e-purse in 1995.