VISA certification

STMicroelectronics today announced that CSOB Bank in the Czech Republic and Kredyt Bank Poland have received VISA certification for the personalization of their Proton Prisma cards and will begin a mass roll-out of these cards in the next few weeks. Both banks are part of the KBC Bank &Insurance Group, one of Europe's important financial groups and leading financial institutions in Central and Eastern Europe, which signed a license agreement with Proton World International in 2002 allowing a number of KBC's associated banks in Central and Eastern Europe to start implementing the Proton Prisma multi-application smart card technology. In 2002, Kredyt Bank began working with Proton World International, which was acquired by STMicroelectronics in April 2003, to implement the infrastructure required to allow issuance of Proton Prisma EMV cards. Kredyt Bank installed MATRIX, which is the Proton Prisma card management and personalization system, and integrated it successfully into its own host system. Following the certification from VISA of the personalized Proton Prisma card, Kredyt Bank started in June 2003 to issue chip-based VISA Classic and VISA Gold credit cards. In a later phase, Kredyt Bank also plans to replace its present VISA Electron and Maestro debit cards by Proton Prisma-based EMV cards. The bank is also exploring opportunities to optimize the multi-application functionality of the Proton Prisma platform by working with partners in loyalty applications. In the Czech Republic, CSOB Bank has also successfully installed Proton Prisma's Matrix card lifecycle management and personalization system and is starting the migration of its Visa Electron debit card base to chip technology in June 2003, for which it received Visa certification. Other CSOB card products will be gradually converted to the same Proton Prisma EMV multi-application platform: e.g. CSOB's Post Savings Bank will later this year start converting all its debit cards to Proton Prisma. Following the successful implementations of the Proton Prisma platform in the Czech Republic and Poland, a third KBC-affiliated bank, K&H, has also decided to implement the platform in Hungary.