Banco Santander Uruguay Works with Cryptomathic & ICPayment

26 -  October 2015

Partners deliver solution with central and instant issuance modes, enabling flexible personalisation for bank’s payment and multi-purpose University Cards 

Cryptomathic and ICPayment have joined forces to deliver a flexible card issuance solution which has been implemented into Banco Santander Uruguay’s production environment. The solution integrates Cryptomathic’s EMV data preparation platform, CardInk, with SPEC personalisation software from ICPayments and will be used primarily to issue chip enabled VISA Advantis and MasterCard payment cards to customers.

The card issuance platform has additional capability to personalise ID cards, based on MiFare technology, with photos and demographic information. This enables it to support the issuance of the bank’s multi-purpose University Cards for Uruguayan students and alumni.  

CardInk provides the secure and flexible platform required for data generation and cryptographic key management during the issuance process. Card data is then transferred to ICPayment’s SPEC solution for personalisation to take place. A key feature of the solution is its ability to work in mixed modes – central and instant issuance. This capability gives Banco Santander the flexibility to personalise cards either at a centralised hub location or at a local site, in branch or on campus for example, depending on the needs of customers and card programmes.

Commenting on behalf of Banco Santander Uruguay, Daniel Gordiola, Cards Product Manager, says: “We are always looking for new ways to improve our products and services. It was critical that the platform enabled us to quickly and efficiently deliver new products to customers. We explored a number of different smart card personalisation solutions before selecting the joint platform from Cryptomathic and ICPayments, which can be easily scaled to support future business requirements. It was the right decision; we have been hand-held through the consultation and early production stages and are reassured by the provision of the 24/7 vendor support for daily operations.”

Guillaume Forget, Senior Vice President at Cryptomathic, comments: “The Santander Group is one of the most high profile banking entities globally, so the successful integration of CardInk into a card issuance platform for Banco Santander Uruguay is a significant milestone for Cryptomathic. The strong partnership we have formed with ICPayment in the region has allowed us to bring together best-of-breed data preparation and personalisation software to create a highly flexible card issuance solution which can be tailored to many different production environments. The solution we offer, in partnership with ICPayment, empowers South American banks to rapidly respond to ever changing market demands. It does this by offering real choice: choice of issuance modes, choice of hardware vendors and choice of applications.”

Mirko Koscina, Founder and Director at ICPayment adds: “Santander Group is one of the most important financial institutions worldwide and is recognised for continuous products and service innovations. The implementation of the SPEC personalisation solution with an added value application for universities in Santander Uruguay is a concrete example of ICPayment fulfilling its mission; to provide our customers with solutions which allow them to explore new services and business models. This was fulfilled through the joint work done with Cryptomathic. The integration of CardInk for EMV data preparation with our card personalisation solution, SPEC, was a big step in our partnership. We can now offer a reliable solution that is flexible and capable of adapting to our customers' needs, allowing them to manage their products and issuance process according to their local context and business opportunities.”