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"Slovenia's Banka Koper becomes first issuer of Visa on Multos card

Banka Koper, one of the leading financial institutions in Slovenia, today became the world's first Visa issuer to deploy Visa Smart Credit and Debit on a MULTOS multi-application platform, marking the culmination of intensive effort for Banka Koper, and the MULTOS consortium members including Keycorp Ltd, Thales eSecurity and StepNexus.

In addition to its recent relaunch of its MasterCard portfolio using M/Chip 4 on Keycorp MULTOS, Banka Koper is now rolling out its Visa chip card program, deploying multi-application MULTOS cards which support both VSDC and the Visa Dynamic Passcode Authentication application to support remote cardholder authentication.

Until today, MULTOS had not yet been certified as a platform for Visa International's chip applications and so Banka Koper had been unable to realise the full benefits of deploying a consistent open standard platform for all its smart card issuance needs. The certification of MULTOS and MULTOS step/one with Visa allows dual issuers the choice of a single MULTOS platform to support the chip applications of both payment schemes.

"Banka Koper is a firm believer in MULTOS technology." said Gojmir Nabergoj, senior consultant at Banka Koper. "Having finally managed to complete our deployment of chip cards across both payment brands without needing to support two different hardware platforms and associated personalisation systems, the Visa MULTOS card now contains both VSDC and the Visa Dynamic Passcode Authentication. The new Visa Electron Prepaid card now also contains our own PKI application, allowing users to load and benefit from the use of their digital certificates in e-related services."

Additional details of the project and the consortium members involved include:

Keycorp Limited (ASX: KYC), a global supplier of secure electronic transactions, recently gained full Type Approval from Visa Approval Services for its implementation of the Visa Smart Debit and Credit (VSDC) application on the Keycorp MULTOS I4E platform. This marks the third VSDC implementation by Keycorp to be approved by Visa recently and follows on from the successful certification of the Keycorp Infineon I4D MULTOS and the ID1 step/one platforms. This VSDC implementation is based on the latest VSDC 1.4.0 specifications from Visa International and has been approved on tthe Infineon SLE66CX162PE microslim security controller, running Keycorp's MULTOS 4.2 operating system.

Richard Cusson, GM of Smartcard Technologies at Keycorp added: "With this recent certification of Banka Koper, Keycorp and its partners strengthens the ability to offer a one-stop solution for dual issuers who previously may have relied on multiple platforms or alternative technologies. This is a major step forward for Financial Institutions worldwide wanting to unleash the full potential of their EMV card issuance using MULTOS"