"Smart idea for your card 4 Feb, 2008, 0235 hrs IST,Vikas Kumar, TNN The facilities of DEI Limited in Mumbai's industrial area of MIDC in Andheri East, could easily compare with that of a classified military installation—shock detectors on windows and walls, surveillance cameras panning every possible nook of the complex, motion detectors, anti-passback systems (to prevent the ID holder to pass back the card to someone else after entering), no-pocket aprons and intense frisking of anyone who leaves the place.
Probably the kind of arrangements you would find at a Reserve Bank of India mint. Well, it's close enough, given what DEI does by way of its services.
If you are a credit or debit cardholder, chances are that your card and the welcome kit that came with it were sent to you by this relatively unknown but highly specialised firm in Mumbai. DEI's core business is personalising payment cards—credit and debit cards—as well by embossing and printing details such as the card holder's name and picture and dispatching them on behalf of many of the private and public sector banks in India.
"We are in the identity management business," says Deepak Soota, managing director, DEI.After receiving customer data from the bank, DEI processes the cards, prints out the welcome kit and dispatches them to cardholders.
To get a sense of the complexity involved in the process, consider the sheer range of cards compounded by the types and varieties from each bank. So there are Master and Visa cards, and among them categories such as Classic, Silver and Gold, photo cards, co-branded cards, and of course, re-issue of cards that had incorrect data, and so on. "We handle as many as 600 card types in a single day," says Soota.
Working on a 24/7 schedule with a turnaround time ranging from four hours to 48 hours, DEI processes up to 60,000 cards every day, and it has to do so with unfailing accuracy, safeguarding every single card that enters and leaves its premises.
That explains the strong web of security around its operations. In fact, any kind of change in the systems or layout of the facilities needs an approval from Mastercard and Visa. Soota recalls that on one occasion a card went missing, the facility was sealed off so no one could enter or leave.
After all efforts to locate the card failed, they played back the surveillance tapes over the past few hours and discovered that one card from a set had slipped off the table and got stuck to a stray scotch tape on the side. "Out here, every single card is accounted for, " he says.
The company began by importing plastic cards for banks and then moved into personalisation services. What helps is the business of its parent company Venture Infotek, which is India's leading third party transaction processing company, handling the back-end for a majority of the credit and debit card transactions between merchant establishments—shops, restaurants, airline counters and so on—and the issuing banks. The group has the largest installed base of point of sale (POS) terminals, where credit and debit cards are swiped against purchases by consumers. Of the estimated 350,000 terminals across the country, Soota says 80,000 have been installed by DEI, and the rest by other providers and banks.
The magnetic storage card may be the most ubiquitous standard across the world but Soota says it's also the least secure as data can be easily copied and misused. "The world is moving towards a more intelligent card," he says. Such a card is embedded with a smart chip that stores transaction data in a secure, encrypted form.
However, the transition to the new format is a time-consuming, costly and complex process as it means changing terminals at merchant establishments everywhere. One step forward has been the EMV or the Euro-Master-Visa standard that aims to ensure interoperability between smart chip payment cards and terminals across the world.
In India, Soota informs that DEI is bringing in technology that will enable data transfer from magnetic stripe cards to smart-chip cards and the company is in talks with leading banks to roll this out soon. The technology could also help upgrade existing terminals to smart chip readers with little additional cost, and bring in combo cards that will have both capabilities to facilitate the transition process."
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