TSYS, Gemplus and IBM have teamed up to develop a multi-application smart card management system aimed at simplifying and streamlining the process for companies to implement chip-card programmes.
The partners say the system will aim to maintain critical smart card programmes such as loyalty and rewards, credit, debit or other payments, security, identification, and access on a single, highly secure card with an embedded microchip.
The alliance expects to service between 10 million and 30 million smart cards worldwide by 2005.
The system will be based on TSYS' global card-processing platform, TS2, which is to be integrated with a smart card management system (CMS-eSM) built by IBM. Gemplus will supply its application management system.