1997-08-20 , E/IC-807/260

A new Visa International merchant card based on one of Philips Semiconductors' most advanced secure chips - the P83C858 cryptocontroller - has been developed for trials in the UK and Japan starting later this year. Merchant cards, which need to be exceptionally secure, are used to configure, validate and protect reader terminals. Those terminals are then enabled to accept, authenticate and respond to consumer cards.

The Visa Cash trials are the first high-volume trials using public-key cryptography in a financial application. Public-key cryptography enables mutually authenticated, high-security payment transactions to be processed off-line. Up to 15,000 cards are expected to be used in the UK trial alone.

The Philips Semiconductors P83C858 chip is a smart card cryptocontroller offering high security with high performance using 8 kbytes of EEPROM and 20 kbytes of ROM. The chip also contains the FAME (Fast Accelerator for Modular Exponentiation) arithmetic cryptocontroller coprocessor which provides the highest execution speed of any smart card IC in production today. It supports multiple public-key algorithms including RSA which is used in the Visa merchant card.

"We wanted exceptional security and functionality, plus high performance and memory sizes," said Irv Wentzien, senior vice president, Visa International. "We are confident that the trials using this advanced chip will help us conduct secure cash transfers and chart the way forward."

Philips Semiconductors is the only company currently shipping cryptocontrollers in high volume for commercial use worldwide. Applications include banking and secure financial transactions, Pay TV security, network access and telecommunications. It is estimated that more than 3 million cryptocontrollers in total have been supplied to customers, representing a 55% share of the total cryptocontroller market. The devices for the Visa trials are currently being manufactured.

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Philips Electronics NV, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the ninth largest semiconductor supplier in the world. Philips Semiconductors is a leader with a proven reputation in the development and production of cryptocontrollers for smart cards and commercial applications. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by regional application labs.

Visa is the preferred payment brand and the largest consumer payment system worldwide. It plays a pivotal role in advancing new payment products and technologies to benefit its 21,000 Member financial institutions, their cardholders and the global economy. Visa's nearly 600 million cards are accepted at more than 14 million worldwide locations, including almost 370,000 ATMs in the Visa Global ATM Network. Visa's Internet address is  www.visa.com

RSA is a registered trademark of RSA Data Security