JCB Issues Hybrid Smart Cards in Taiwan

Taipei Bank is among the first Taiwanese banks to issue smart cards. The bank, one of 30 issuers in Taiwan of JCB, the Japanese credit card company, is issuing the EMV-based smart cards to about 3,000 employees of First International Computers, one of the world's leading companies in the design and production of motherboards, PC systems, and servers.

The National Credit Card Center (NCCC) in Taiwan is providing support for the smart cards issuing program.

The FIC Employee Smart Cards are hybrid cards with both contact and contactless chips in a single card. The smart cards provide five functions: credit payment, office building access control, office parking access control, payment at the company cafeteria and employee identification.

The contact chip contains the JCB EMV credit payment application, J/Smart, and provides protection against fraud. The contactless chip, Mifare, contains an access control function that will ensure both high security and speedy access to office buildings and parking. It also allows quick payment at the company cafeteria. The smart cards have a photograph of the cardholder and are also used as employee identification cards.

In the past five years in Taiwan, the number of JCB cardmembers has grown to 1.2 million and the number of merchants has doubled to 140,000.

In Taiwan, credit card companies are aggressively introducing smart cards to prevent losses from fraud and to provide multiple services. Starting with the Taipei Bank/FIC smart cards issuance, JCB has been negotiating with various sectors to form alliances by using chip technology, including hybrid cards. JCB has already established plans for smart cards with the post-payment of transit fares, such as bus, subway and train.