French company ASK, a contactless card provider, and WS Packaging, a privately-owned U.S. label and tag manufacturer, announced they are jointly working to produce secure identity, mass transit and financial bank cards in the U.S. and Canada. At the same time, ASK says it will be piloting a project in an unnamed city with the LaSer Group, a European customer relations services company, to offer private label cards combining transport and payment applications.
ASK contactless cards and tickets are already available in the transit systems in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Philadelphia.
Regarding the pilot that will combine both transit and payment capabilities on the same card, Philippe Cessac, LaSer’s R&D manager, commented: “We wished to broaden the card’s offer with contactless technology and the pilot with ASK allows us to add a public transport application to our private payment cards that are used in commercial centers and stores.”
According to ASK, its contactless, embossing compliant smart card offers a speedy transaction time thanks to its native operating system. Its smart card also includes a magstripe on the back to be used on the already installed base of readers for private payment.
In a third announcement, released during CARTES in Paris last week, ASK says its Sophia-Antipolis plant in the south of France, has received MasterCard’s Global Vendor Certification designation, allowing the company to manufacture MasterCard banking cards and embed chips for MasterCard issuers. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/secureidnews-4.gif)
