The key to successful migration is developing an infrastructure that can introduce new solutions quickly and easily.
Organizations planning to issue smart cards all face the need to enhance their existing card management systems with a data preparation component.
And, in the majority of cases, organizations must work to protect investments in existing systems while fulfilling today’s requirements at affordable prices.
Maintain control
On the issuing side, many early adopter banks decided it was much easier to hand off all their data to trusted card bureaus, who had previously handled their magnetic stripe card production, and ask them to generate the template and personalize the chip. Equally, others have implemented data preparation solutions around their existing in-house production facilities.
In the long-term, however, these approaches may cause more problems than they solve. In both cases, the chip data, which is critical to realizing the full opportunity of the EMV proposition, either no longer resides within the bank’s infrastructure or is not maintained as part of the card and application database and life-cycle process.
Outsourcing introduces more people into the production chain and therefore there is a risk it may be less carefully managed than a pure in-house process. Crucially, both the above approaches make it harder for issuers to move to dynamic risk management and take advantage of the many opportunities for offering additional services on the chip card.
The same can be said where issuers have elected to use ‘stand-in’ authentication services offered by the card associations. These have been helpful in assisting migration and meeting the association deadlines for issuer compliance, but they could present challenges for banks looking to move to the next stage.
Long-term success
What is clear is that the winners will have enabled their infrastructure for EMV from end-to-end and, having done this, will be positioned to introduce new solutions more quickly and more easily.
Since smart card requirements are constantly changing, it is important that a smart card issuance solution not only meets today’s needs, but also provides a path to meet any future smart card requirements, such as contactless, mobile, multi-application and in-branch or post-issuance.
The enablement will therefore need to be comprehensive and, in the first instance, may cost more than the ‘quick fix’.
Ultimately, however, it will reap benefits in terms of least risk and offer the best return on investment.