Taiwan's Taipei Bank has ordered 500,000 Multos-based smart cards for distribution to national lottery participants.
The cards will include MasterCard's M/Chip credit and Mondex purse applications. Other applications, such as loyalty, digital certificate or e-ticketing, can be loaded in the future.
Taiwanese smart card manufacturer Foongtone is to manufacture the cards in Taiwan and supply them to Taipei Bank on an ongoing basis. Sydney-based e-payments firm Keycorp has commenced delivery of the Multos operating system modules to Foongtone, with full shipment of units expected by the end of 2003.
Frank Lee, CEO of Foongtone Technology, comments: "Foongtone has worked with Taipei Bank to provide a solution with multi-application capability on cards which is easy to manage and which reduces the incidence of fraud."
MasterCard, working with Keycorp, introduced Taiwan's first EMV-compliant smartcard in July 2001. "The introduction of the lottery card in June this year is another of MasterCard's and Keycorp's efforts in facilitating chip migration in Taiwan," says Shuan Ghaidan, vice president, advanced payment systems, Asia/Pacific, MasterCard International.
Keycorp previously announced an ongoing agreement to supply smartcards to Cosmosbank, the first bank in Taiwan to introduce MasterCard's M/Chip credit application to its customers.