This deployment, driven by ACI Smart Chip Manager, will enable Emporiki Bank's cardholders to use their EMV card for secure POS purchases, ATM transactions and international payments.

Emporiki Bank issues its multi-application EMV cards using ACI Smart Chip Manager for Card and Application Management to manage and automate the process of smart card issuance. The software offers life-cycle management of all smart cards and applications while performing the data preparation process for these EMV cards. Emporiki Bank also personalises these cards in-house using ACI Smart Chip Manager for Card Personalisation Management on a Datacard 9000. This offers the required flexibility in smart card personalisation to cope with multiple card platforms and applications. The next step in the EMV migration will be to dynamically manage their off-line risk, where the solution's script engine will play a dominant role as well.

Emporiki Bank was the first Greek bank to issue EMV on a sizeable scale, ensuring safe and secure transactions across their payment processing network. Emporiki Bank now has the ability to handle international payments quickly and efficiently. The bank will also benefit from the liability shift and the market positioning of the Visa and MasterCard brands.

"Recent developments in Europe have increased demand on our systems and we recognised the need to step up our processes in order to ensure we can cope with secure international transactions and comply with upcoming European standards," said Antonis Sakaloglou, sector manager of Emporiki Bank. "Our investment here will clearly benefit our existing customers by offering them enhanced applications while preserving maximum protection. The ACI solution offers us both the flexibility and scalability to launch this customer offering on a grand scale."

"This is an example of our increasing success in Europe," said Rainier Brueren, managing director of ACI Worldwide Smart Card Division. "This is the largest EMV project in Greece. Emporiki Bank has been a customer of ACI for 13 years and we believe our flexible and scalable solutions will ensure they keep pace with changing requirements and increased levels of demand."