canada emv and chip rollout, page-2

I just stumbled across this. As an FYI the Candian EMV rollout probably won't happen in any meaningful way until 2010 when the liability shift happens. There is a pilot happening in Waterloo (just south of Toronto) in October this year but it will probably be early next year till we see a lot of traction there.

Personally, I wouldn't touch Keycorp. The terminal business is becoming an increasingly margin based game. VeriFone's purchase of Lipman (and hence Dione) makes them clearly number 1 in the market. Ingenico are rumoured to be eyeing off Hypercom (no 3 in the US) and also trying to buy Sagem's terminal business (Sagem Monetel). This will give them a similar market share to VeriFone. There are rumours that Keycorp may look to get out of the terminal game all together. Keycorp are a niche player in markets such as Australia, Canada etc. Their devices aren't world leaders (refer to Verifone's new MX870 or even devices such as Fujitsu's B-Pad for innovation) and it looks increasingly like it will be difficult for them to obtain economies of scale.

The EMV rollout should help the terminal manufacturers however I just don't see Keycorp being a large beneficiary on the terminal side. I can't comment on the card side of the business (although the recent merging of GemPlus and Axalto leads me to believe margins are pretty slim here too)

Shonky