SVB will offer to its clients, many of whom travel frequently, the security and convenience of payment cards based on the Europay MasterCard Visa (EMV) standard. Gemalto also provides consulting on EMV migration, personalisation, and delivery of the cards to the end-user.

With a traditional magnetic stripe payment card, U.S. travelers are often unable to use them abroad, in particular at automatic unattended kiosks. This is largely due to the awareness in the countries that already adopted chip payment cards that a significant proportion of the residual payment cards fraud "is imported", i.e. coming from visitors and users who use their less secure magnetic stripe cards to pay for goods and services. An October 2009 Aite Group study shows that U.S. cardholders feel "extremely frustrated" (74 percent) and "embarrassed" (56 percent) when their cards are declined overseas. Migrating to new EMV chip payment cards will enable SVB to fully address a growing concern for U.S. cardholders and offer them global card acceptance.

Starting with the SVB MasterCard World Elite portfolios, which are dedicated to cardholders that frequently travel overseas, Gemalto will provide SVB complete issuance services including full card design and production, secure data management and personalisation of the upgraded cards, as well as ensuring global acceptance and forward compatibility for both online and offline EMV payment transactions.

"Our main objective for this program was to shorten production time to get the cards in our clients' hands as soon as possible, so we needed our partner to be experienced and respond quickly," said Pradeep T. Moudgal, Head of Global Cards and Merchant Services for Silicon Valley Bank. "We believe Gemalto has the expertise and capabilities to meet our timeline and ensure a smooth transition for our clients."

"Gemalto played a key role in the first upgrade to the U.S. payment system in decades with the lauunch of contactless technology" added Jack Jania, vice president and general manager Secure Transactions of Gemalto North America. "Now, consumers are asking for an upgrade to EMV so they can use their cards securely and conveniently overseas. It is very natural for cardholders to expect their payment cards to work anytime anywhere when needed, and we are delighted to be supporting SVB as one of the fast movers in the U.S. to address this critical customer need."