Government ID, Smart Cards, Identification and Authentication

Gemalto buys South African card personalization company

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

French digital security provider Gemalto has agreed to buy South African card personalization company NamiTech from Allied Technologies Ltd. (Altech), a Johannesburg investment holding company. The Linbro firm, with revenues of $20.6 million, provides secure cards and services to South Africa’s major banks. The purchase does not include Allied’s other holdings, including Altech Card Solutions and Namitech West Africa in Nigeria.

“Africa is a region on the rise for us,” said Gemalto CEO Olivier Piou. “This project will enable us to grow our service offering to Southern Africa customers, and contribute to the development of the industry in the area.”

The transaction, subject to approval by the South African Competition Commission, is expected to close next March. [end] 

Barnes International announced that its updated Visa GPR Test module now complies with the latest version of Visa’s Global Personalization Requirements.

The updated test tool will offer evaluation of a chip product to ensure it meets industry and payment scheme certification standards. This reduces a product’s time to market as the chip is aligned to Visa Specifications throughout the development life cycle and before applying for official Visa approval.

read more »

Morpho has announced it is bringing one of its latest biometric offerings to South Africa via its South African distribution partner Ideco Biometric Security Solutions, according to am IT Web article.

read more »

Diners Club Spain has chosen Gemalto to help it migrate to EMV in 2012. In this effort, Gemalto is providing consulting and personalization services to Diners Club Spain.

read more »

Barnes International released its updated personalization test module in compliance with the Visa’s latest global personalization requirements (GPR).

Incorporating its card personalization validation tools (CPT 2000v3 and CAT 3000v3), the test scripts offer comprehensive evaluation of a chip product to ensure it will meet industry and payment scheme certification standards.

read more »

Heartland Payment Systems Campus Solutions division, in partnership with Bridgeway Solutions, an identification and security solutions provider, has been chosen as one of South Carolina’s preferred system providers for electronic disbursement of financial aid refunds and payments to students.

read more »

Credit Agricole, a retail banking group based in Paris, is teaming up with Gemalto to launch a large-scale deployment of contactless EMV banking cards in France.

read more »