Prism boosts smartcard capacity

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26 March 2003 News

Secure electronic transactions company, Prism Holdings, has become the largest 'turnkey' manufacturer of high-end smartcards on the African continent following a deal valued at more than R6-million with Cybernétix of France.

Cybernétix, one of the world's leading suppliers of automated equipment for the production of smartcards, has provided Prism with high-speed equipment which will enable the company's Springs-based chip-card fabrication plant to increase its milling and embedding capacity by 100%. In addition, Prism's SIM (subscriber identity module) personalisation capacity - the art of writing card-specific electronic data to the microprocessor chip - will increase by more than 250% to some 3000 cards per hour and a total of between one and 1,5-million completed cards per month.

Prism CEO Alvin Els says that Prism's ability to comfortably fulfil its rising production commitments to the company's local and international clients has been under increasing pressure for some time.

"This has been particularly acute in the GSM mobile telephony SIM card market. In fact, we were recently forced to sub-contract to industry partners to assist with production fulfilment. However, this was less than satisfactory as the problems associated with logistics and the complex personalisation procedure make the entire process extremely difficult to manage remotely.

"It was therefore clear that in order to meet our customers' fulfilment needs and expectations for quality, higher-volume production, we had to boost our production capacity. Cybernétix met all our criteria," he adds.

The deal will ensure that Prism is able to meet the rising demand for smartcards for the foreseeable future.

"It is our intention to build sufficient capacity to meet our direct customer pipeline," says Els. "We have no aspirations to become a general contract manufacturer of chip cards - that is not our core focus. However, we are now equipped to ensure that our banking and mobile operator clients receive consistently high levels of service in all aspects of their smartcard production needs."

For more information contact Prism Holdings 011 548 1000, www.prism.co.za

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