MasterCard and Europay have reported the first ever trans-Atlantic EMV smart card transaction.
The groundbreaking transaction was achieved when Posto Safari, a petrol station in Sao Paulo, accepted a Barclays' issue chip card for payment. The event marks the first occasion a European-issue smart card has been accepted in a chip terminal outside of Europe for payments, says MasterCard.
EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) is a joint card association initiative designed to secure international chip credit card interoperability.
The news follows the recent announcement of a major chip migration programme in Brazil, which involves the issuance of 16 million MasterCard M/Chip Lite smart cards to cardholders and the roll-out of a complete chip acceptance infrastructure.
Seperately, MasterCard also announced the development of a chip-activated digital wallet solution with Trintech. Using Trintech's chip-enabled eIssuer, MasterCard banks will be able to offer their customers a mechanism to conduct their online transactions using both a smart card digital ID and PIN number. The chip contains a digital ID number that authenticates the cardholder and then launches the digital form-filling wallet.
Recent studies indicate a growing consumer interest in using smart cards for electronic commerce transactions. According to a Greenfield Online consumer research study conducted by MasterCard in May 2000, 68 percent of online buyers indicate that they believe putting a computer chip on a credit card makes the card more "secure". An additional 59 percent state they believe the computer chip makes the card more "valuable" to them.