Infineon Technologies would provide contactless chips for select MasterCard Global payment schemes, which are being introduced in 13 countries worldwide, including Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia and the US. Designed to make payment transactions with more convenient magnetic-stripe cards or conventional chip-based cards, the future debit and credit cards will contain a chip featuring a contactless interface and state-of-the-art cryptographic capabi­lities, an Infineon statement said.

Future debit and credit cards will contain a chip featuring a contactless interface and state-of-the-art cryptographic capabi­lities

The company said that at least 400 million chip-based payment cards were issued worldwide in 2006, with MasterCard and Visa programs alone accounting for about 17 million contactless chip cards.

According to market research company Frost and Sullivan, the conventional contactless payment smart card market is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 63 percent over the next five years. Dr Helmut Gassel, VP and GM-Chip Card and Security Ics, Infineon Technologies, said, “Our combined expertise in security and contactless technology enables us to be the volume supplier not only in payment, but also in other major contactless markets such as e-passport deployments in the US and other countries or public transport projects such as 'T-Money' in Korea.”

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