With more than 500 branches equipped nationwide and over 15,000 cards issued daily, Al Rajhi Bank embarked on the largest rollout of any smart banking card instant issuance solution. Gemalto's unique offer encompasses highly secure EMV DDA1 payment cards, a complete, mission-critical issuance solution along with a full set of services: training, end-to-end project management, maintenance and support.

"Gemalto was able to meet our needs for both the more sophisticated cards and the complete issuance services"

Al Rajhi Bank branches can now securely issue EMV cards to new and existing customers with just one click, from an Arabic-customized interface specially designed for ease-of-use. With card personalization made so swift and simple, Al Rajhi customers walk away with an activated, ready-to-use card in hand in just a few minutes. By deploying Gemalto's solution, Al Rajhi Bank significantly improved on the logistical challenges associated with traditional courier-based delivery services and reduced its associated costs.

In order to ensure full service continuity, the solution can easily redirect card requests from one branch to another, and it also retains central issuance as a back-up system. The high level of reliability of the complete solution has already enabled Al Rajhi to issue half a million EMV chip cards on-the-spot to customers over the last six months.

"Gemalto was able to meet our needs for both the more sophisticated cards and the complete issuance services," said Dr. Abdullah Al-Namlah, Retail General Manager, Al Rajhi Bank. "Al Rajhi has been delivering payment cards at the branch for years so when we determined to switch to EMV, we naturally selected the partner with the broadest experience in EMV instant issuance solutions globally."

"Advanced banking solutions and services are key to our growth strategy", added Philippe Cambriel, Executive Vice-President at Gemalto. "We are pleased with this successful deployment with Al Rahji Banknk, which illustrates nicely the performance of our Instant Issuance solution, and demonstrates once again our expertise in EMV card systems and their successful deployment. It is rewarding for us to see that this nationwide program has visibly benefited the bank and projected a first-class image to its customers."

1 Dynamic Data Authentication (DDA), offers a dynamic security feature which helps to reduce fraud by detecting counterfeit and duplicate cards