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STRONG USER AUTHENTICATION FOR MULTI CHANNEL BANKING
Since the early days of EMV®, card issuing has become less challenging thanks to maturing specifications, increased expertise and flexible vendor solutions. The main challenge for banks and service provides has shifted towards competition, differentiation, time to market, and the ability to be the first to pilot and adapt new technologies. Approximately 10 years after issuing their first EMV® chip cards S2M, a North African market leading pioneer in card payment solutions, found itself in the position that it possessed the card issuing platform and knowhow, but markets where changing and constantly demanding more.
Technology once again became the main issue for ensuring continued success and growth. Meanwhile S2M was stuck with an issuing platform that had not been maintained to reflect the requirements of an evolving market and as a result the organisation needed to rethink its strategy.
Needless to say this posed a new set of challenges, not the least migrating from one platform to another without any disruption or inconvenience to its clients, who had come to expect the high levels of services that S2M is renowned for during more than 30 years in business.
S2M found itself in a difficult position when moving to a new advanced technology. It opened up to new business opportunities but also presented a significant set of technical challenges. We felt comfortable in having chosen the right partner in Cryptomathic but we were pleasantly surprised to find how well the two companies worked together on all aspects and particularly with Cryptomathic’s approach in dealing with unknowns as they arose along the way."
Mr Daddane,
Managing Director of S2M
S2M
S2M is one of the leading service providers in North Africa and pioneered the very first credit card applications in the region. Founded in 1983, S2M has profiled itself for over thirty years as one of the leading players in developing and implementing payment solutions, personalisation, publishing and mailing.
S2M has established an impressive international reputation with hundreds of private and public banks in 22 countries in America, Asia, Africa and the Middle-East relying on its solutions and services.
STATUS BEFORE CRYPTOMATHIC
When migrating from magnetic stripe only to chip in 2003, S2M acquired a data preparation system as part of a complete issuing solution delivered by a card vendor. It enabled S2M to perform data preparation for targeted cards within a project and it worked well for that initial purpose. The system was initially acquired at a reasonable cost, but over time it became apparent that S2M had become locked into a relationship with the card vendor.
The data preparation had shortcomings in terms of both technical and business flexibility.
The functionality was centred around the card vendor’s products and therefore not easy to use for issuing cards from other vendors. Beyond the initial and successful project, S2M had to involve the card vendor each time they wanted to support other card vendor products, which proved costly, as well as time consuming.
It is vital for card issuers, and even more so service providers like S2M to have the freedom to shop around and choose the best card platform based on required functionality and price. In spite of that S2M suddenly found themselves tied into one vendor, putting the business at risk by having no choice but to forfeit suitable technology or accept the financial overhead associated with custom development, not to mention the uncertainty about expected delivery times.
NEW SOLUTION
In response to these issues S2M decided to opt for a new, flexible and more technologically advanced data preparation system and approached suitable major industry vendors. An RFP was issued and Cryptomathic, having also offered its data preparation system CardInk to S2M ten year prior, was determined to prove it worthiness and ability to help solve S2M’s problems once and for all. After an intense dialogue, exchange of technical documentation and vendor demonstrations, it became apparent to S2M that CardInk from Cryptomathic was the best-fit option. Despite S2M considering several other solutions Cryptomathic was chosen for a number of specific reasons:
- Mature technology
- Experienced vendor
- International expertise
- Hardware vendor independency
- Impressive reference list
In addition there was a good cultural fit between S2M and Cryptomathic with quality ethos, staff competence and ability to work together in completing an advanced task.
After ten years of successfully issuing EMV chip cards, S2M, the North African pioneer in card payment solutions, took the strategic decision to re-evaluate its EMV data preparation system for its card issuing platform. Decisive factors were:
- Compliance and security
- Built-in EMV key management
- Flexibility and configurability
- Stability and productivity
- Time-to-market