By joining the alliance Consult Hyperion hopes to increase its visibility and further develop relationships with industry players after seeing an increased demand for its specialist expertise for supporting large scale smartcard implementations for governments, banks and telecommunication providers. In addition, the Company has attended Smart Card Alliance events in the past and found them extremely informative and met excellent people working in the American markets.

"We've steadily become more and more involved in smartcard and mobile payment projects in North and Latin America in recent years, and have already benefited hugely from attending Smart Card Alliance events, so becoming full members was the next logical step, said Dave Birch, Director, Consult Hyperion. "As a consultancy working on projects across the globe we need to keep up-to-date on all the latest developments and technical standards and have found alliances such as the Smart Card Alliance, Global Platform and the NFC Forum tremendously helpful to us."

The 180 Smart Card Alliance members worldwide include participants from financial, government, enterprise, transportation, mobile telecommunications, healthcare, and retail industries that provide a single industry voice for smart card technology and leading industry discussion on the impact and value of smart cards. Consult Hyperion work on projects across the globe involving mobile payment and contactless smartcard applications for governments, financial service, telecommunication, retail and transport organisations, and hope to continue to help influence and support the implementation of smart-card based systems for secure payments, identification, access, and mobile communications.