Mellon Technologies of Greece has licensed Proton World's Prisma smart card technology for the Balcard project which aims to develop pre-paid smart cards for secure cross-border low-value Internet transactions in the Balkan region.
Mellon Technolgies, which heads the EU-funded Balcard consortium, will act as project coordinator for participating issuers, including Eurobank Cards of Greece, Bulgarian Post Bank, JCC Payment Systems from Cyprus and Bank Post of Romania.
Stefanos Karapetsis, executive director of Mellon Group, comments: "In Balcard we intend to demonstrate that prepaid smart cards can provide a secure means of payment to those Internet users that do not have a credit card or a bank account."
Borica, Bulgaria's national card payment operator, will be responsible for installation and customisation of test sites in Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Romania.
French card manufacturer SchlumbergerSema will supply the Proton Prismera cards, which also contain an EMV Plus credit/debit application, data file manager and CEPS e-purse system.
A pilot scheme is due to be launched in Q2 2003 in Greece and Bulgaria.