The first phase of the Afripa solution features a Proton R3 system to demonstrate the secure electronic transfer of cash from one bank branch to another. The system uses a Windows/NT host with 6 load terminals and 12 payment terminals and serves four branches of SNC a financial institution in Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast. Demonstration smart cards have been supplied, and Afripa says it has received expressions of interest from several banks in the region.

In the second phase of the project, the system will be upgraded to allow the e-purses to be loaded at ATMs or bank branches on-line to the issuer, and to make purchases at retail merchants or to "buy" cash from ATMs, says Afripa. For the third phase, it is envisaged that the system will migrate to Proton Prisma and the e-purse will be able to be used internationally in CEPS-based mode.

Possible later additional applications would be EMV credit/debit, Web phone payments and secure Internet payments, says Afripa which is projecting demand for several hundred thousand cards in the first 5 years. The timings of each phase will be decided once individual agreements have been made between Afripa and each participating bank.

Armand Linkens, CEO of Proton World, says: "This project is a great opportunity to demonstrate new uses for smart cards and to show how they can help solve problems in developing countries. With the countries in this region already sharing a common currency, we can also show the advantages of our open, interoperable technology."

In a seperate initiave, Proton World says it has successfully implemented the new Open Platform 1.5.4 Terminal framework specification, which is designed to make smart card applications terminal-independent.

The terminal interoperability standard has been developed by the Device Committee of GlobalPlatform, a cross-industry organisation that owns and develops the Open Platform specifications for multiple-application smart cards.

The spec is being billed as an important step towards a new generation of smart card terminals that are platform and vendor-independent. Its adoption means that costly development work can be done once and then replicated in many different implementations.

Proton World says it has developed and implemented OPTF-compliant modules for e-purse load, purchase and balance reading, using both the Proton R3 and the Proton Prisma technology releases. The modules are platform-independent, and were created using the Java programming language and inter-application and application-platform interfaces defined and specified by GlobalPlatform.

The implementation was first demonstrated at the Proton World booth at the CardTech/SecurTech trade show in Las Vegas from 14-17 May. The demonstration used a PC, a C-ZAM/Smash smart card terminal from Banksys and a Proton Prisma smart card.

Yves Moulart, CTO at Proton World, says: "We believe that OPTF solves many of the problems associated with traditional terminal development, and opens the door to a new generation of terminals, just like OP 2.1 and CEPS have led to a new generation of smart cards. Both of these developments will help to realise the full potential of smart cards."