Working together, XIRING and Cryptomathic will provide banks with the latest technology for identifying banking customers in non-face to face situations, for example, on the Internet, or on the telephone. By ensuring that online transactions are protected against Internet fraud, such as phishing, banks allow their customers more frequent access and hence greater control to their finances.

The non-exclusive partnership consists of the integration of XIRING's Xi-Sign range of EMV based readers into Cryptomathic's latest versatile and scalable hardware-enhanced Authenticator Server. The partnership agreement will also mean that the two organizations will promote each other's offers to the market. Banks can confidently choose the XIRING range of devices and the Cryptomathic Authenticator Server to get a complete authentication solution.

The result of the integration is a robust and easy to deploy authentication system, that is compliant with the MasterCard Chip Authentication Program (CAP) standard for EMV-cards, published by MasterCard. XIRING's Xi-Sign range of devices, based on the EMV card, include the first product to have successfully passed the CAP conformity tests defined by MasterCard in 2004. XIRING's O2S Banking Authentication strategy provides solutions for all segments of the market and can hence meet any bank's needs from the simplest token type of password generator, to a more sophisticated authentication device in calculator style.

Nigel Reavley, Director of Sales and Marketing for Banking at XIRING, comments: "Currently the difficulty for banks and financial institutions has been selecting partners that minimise risk and work together, without incurring huge costs. As the Cryptomathic Authenticator integrates seamlessly with XIRING's Xi-Sign readers, this will minimise the impact on legacy systems and reduce deployment costs for banks.

"By combining XIRING's Xi-Sign readers with Cryptomathic's Authenticator, we are offering banks the newest technology available to safeguard customers against increasingly prevalent phishing attacks and online fraudsters. Through working together to deliver a solution that meets the CAP standard, banks can be assured of the security of their online services with the deployment of a secure solution that enables strong cardholder authentication."

Peter Landrock, Founder & Owner of Cryptomathic adds: "We believe the CAP standard is an important way forward to combat phishing attacks. We have delivered scalable hardwarebased solutions to the banking world for nearly a decade now, and we want to take this technology an important step further with XIRING, with whom we have a had a good relationship for a number of years."

XIRING's partnership with Cryptomathic has been driven bythe growing demand for secure Internet banking services. According to Forrester Research, the number of e-banking users in Europe is set to rise from 75 million users in 2005 to 130 million users in 2007.