Riverwoods, Ill. – February 13, 2007 –
Discover Financial Services, a business
unit of Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) today announced
that Discover Network has certified the MicroPass
L4 intelligent hardware platform from INSIDE Contactless.
The MicroPass L4 is a contactless chip platform
for cards, key fobs and other devices approved
for use with Discover Network's fast, secure,
and simple contactless payment network.
“This certification represents another step
in Discover Network's path to providing a comprehensive,
user-centric contactless payments solution to
consumers and merchants,” said Joby Orlowsky,
vice president for Discover Financial Services.
“As the first platform certification, the MicroPass
L4 provides a market-leading chip platform for
use within Discover Network branded card and key
fob deployments, while meeting Discover Network's
rigorous standards for security, reliability,
and ease of use.”
Discover Network's
certification process ensures that its contactless
payment solution properly operates on the MicroPass
L4 platform and is also interoperable with Discover-certified
payment terminals. Contactless payment transactions
utilize short-range proximity technology, enabling
cardholders to simply wave their bank card, key
tag, or other form of payment device, in front
of a contactless payment terminal to pay for their
purchase. MicroPass technology, containing the
Discover payment application, is designed to be
embedded within a Discover branded card or key
tag and used for quick transactions in a variety
of retail counter environments with the wave of
a card.
“Discover Network's certification
of the MicroPass L4 opens the potential for issuer
deployments of Discover branded cards,” said Charles
Walton, EVP payments of INSIDE Contactless. “INSIDE
is ready to support issuers of Discover Network
branded cards with a Discover Network compatible
solution available from all major card manufacturers.”
In addition to providing consumers
with unparalleled convenience, contactless payment
methods offer multiple merchant benefits by enabling
them to move more customers through checkout lines
in less time, resulting in transaction volume
increases of up to 12 percent. And, a recent study
showed that contactless payment helps increase
average transaction size by up to 30 percent compared
to purchases made with cash.
INSIDE's
MicroPass
™ is a next-generation microprocessor-based
contactless chip platform designed specifically
to provide a reliable user experience, flexible
application development support, and availability
through trusted card manufacturers, in a cost-effective
manner. MicroPass uses low power and delivers
optimum read distance, flexible card orientation,
fast transaction speeds and security consistent
with the demands of INSIDE's most stringent customers.
With multi-brand and multi-application support,
MicroPass provides card manufacturers and issuers
with flexibility and ease of deployment.
About Discover Financial Services
Discover Financial Services LLC, a business
unit of Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), operates the
Discover Card with more than 50 million Cardmembers,
and the Discover Network with more than 4 million
merchant and cash access locations. Discover Financial
Services also operates the PULSE ATM/debit network,
which serves over 4,200 financial institutions
and includes almost 250,000 ATMs and approximately
3.4 million POS terminals. For more information,
visit
www.discovercard.com,
www.discovernetwork.com
or
www.pulse-eft.com.
About INSIDE Contactless:
Founded in 1995, INSIDE is headquartered in
France and with global presence in China, Singapore,
Poland and the USA. INSIDE is uniquely positioned
as the only fabless semiconductor company solely
dedicated to the advancement of contactless technology,
leveraging one of the industry's largest intellectual
property portfolios. Through strategic emphasis
in Contactless Payments and Near Field Communications
(NFC), INSIDE has been on a rapid growth track
over the past two years with more than 12M chips
delivered for contactless payment cards in the
US market and a dominant position in driving NFC
standardization and pilot deployments. For more
information, visit www.insidecontactless.com.
CONTACT:
Leslie Beyer
224-405-5154
lesliebeyer@discoverfinancial.com