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Smart in Africa

Shoprite is the first retailer in Africa to be 100% ready to accept smartcard payments.

Trusted Transactions company, Prism Holdings and leading African food retailer, Shoprite Holdings have together pioneered an EMV technology solution which handles and processes an integrated electronic funds transfer (EFT) environment for large FMCG multilane retailers.

According to Lllewellyn Walters, Prism executive director, the Prism solution is 100% EMV certified, making Shoprite the first Africa-wide food retailer to have every element in place for the roll-out of an end-to-end EMV-certified payments environment. The solution has been piloted at five Shoprite stores and full-scale rollout commenced in May.

EMV is the global standard that dictates the design, security and functionality of smartcard terminals and applications and was developed by the major card associations in an effort to reduce fraud. Visa and MasterCard mandated that all new generation payment cards issued by the member banks must be EMV compliant. This means that EMV compliant point-of-sale (POS) terminals must be installed at retail outlets globally so that they can safely accept any EMV-type smartcard from any EMV card issuer.

"Having achieved the EMV certificate for Shoprite effectively triggered the full scale deployment of EMV technology to 9000 retail lanes starting at the beginning of February this year," says Walters.

The project, spanning 18 months, was designed and implemented by Shoprite and Prism, and involved integrating 10 000 VeriFone SC5000 PINpads into the POS system. Prism's TSM220 Transaction Security Modules were introduced to handle the additional security encryption required by the EMV standard. Underpinning the achievement of EMV certification at Shoprite was the use of Prism's EMV kernel* on the VeriFone SC5000 PINpad, this ensures the smooth transition from old-style EFT to new-style EMV EFT.

"While several of our retail clients implemented VeriFone SC5000 PINpads with the EMV approved application kernel in 2003, Shoprite is the first major Africa-wide food retailer to have the necessary infrastructure and encryption capabilities to accept chip cards," explains Walters, adding that chip cards are set to eventually replace existing credit and debit cards, which use magnetic stripe technology.

"Prism has had a long and technically fulfilling history with Shoprite, providing not only EFT services and EMV compliance, but also the technology for the company's house card system, and the use of the Prism Payment Server to deliver secure gift voucher and other value-added services," says Walters.

"Prism continues to innovate in the retail payment space and future developments include among other innovations, the use of biometric authentication, which has been anticipated in the EMV specification," he concludes.

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