“Oberthur Advise has been created to providesound advice, guidance, and project managementto companies wanting to leverage the power ofsmart technology to benefit their business”, saysMartine Guignard. The Oberthur Advise teamcombines expertise drawn from a range ofbackgrounds both inside and outside OberthurCard Systems.

She explains that she has worked for the past15 years in the smart card industry. She sold herconsulting company to De La Rue Card Systemsin 1998, and with the subsequent buy-out byOberthur she found herself part of the Frenchgroup, which is now quoted on the Paris Bourseas Oberthur Card Systems.

“We are starting with two main consultancyofferings,” she says. “One is advice to banks,both issuers and acquirers, who are migrating toEMV smart cards for debit/credit applications;the other is IT security surrounding paymentand electronic transactions.”

On the EMV front, Martine Guignard pointsout, the UK is well into the roll-out of smartcards, and the French banks have begun thechange to EMV from their national system. “Butthere is still plenty of business to be gained frombanks elsewhere in Europe and in Asia. OberthurCard Systems, with its international spread ofbanking customers, will be our prime source ofleads to new business. Customers will wantsolutions for all the solutions that go with issuingcards, from personalization onwards.”

However, the business that Martine Guignardseems to find most exciting and challenging iswhat is known in French business andgovernment circles as ‘teledeclaration’. This is theuse of the Internet facilities by businesses toconduct everyday dealings with theadministration, most specifically with theFinance Ministry. Teledeclaration has been givena boost by the European Commission, MartineGuignard points out, with the legislation ondigital signatures, “The French government is

very keen on this, since it cuts out so muchpaperwork. I have already done a major study onthis topic, taking in the legal and proceduralissues as well as such technical issues such asdigital signatures and PKI.

It is important to realize that PKI is only a partof the solution. For instance, a problem that hasto be addressed is the checking of identities overa period of time; a signature that is currentlybeing used might perhaps have been firstregistered five or six years previously.”

Ms Guignard says the banks will be competingamong themselves to act as intermediaries forbusinesses that need to carry out transactionswith the authorities electronically. Governmentdepartments and agencies, as well as banks, willbe looking for advice in setting up systems andtraining their staff. In all these areas, there will beopportunities for specialist consultancy services.

Another important market is wirelesstelephony. Martine Guignard says that onceOberthur Advise is in full operation, by the endof 2001, she and her team will begin to provideconsultancy on migration from GSM-based SIMcards to UMTS cards. Here, bothtelecommunications operators and serviceproviders will be target customers.

“We are adopting a modular approach”, saysMs Guignard. “We will assist companies on acomplete project, from the audit of currentinfrastructure and selection of the card anddevices, right down to the project co-ordinationand training of personnel.

“With tailored packages covering EMVmigration, UMTS migration, guidance on PKIand smart card personalization in the financialservices or mobile telephony markets, we areaiming at a wide range of customers from mobileoperators and banks to government bodies andtransport operators.”

CCoonnttaacctt: Martine Guignard at Oberthur CardSystems, Tel: +33 1 41 25 28 42, e-mail:m.guignard@oberthurcs.com

10Card Technology Today September 2001

ChipChip TalkWhere leaders of the smart card revolution air their views

chip talk

What is the technological contribution thatAxiomatique brings to the merger ?At Welcome, we have been strong on card andterminal specifications. They [Axiomatique] havebeen strong on back-end systems, for server anddatabase management. 80% of our R&D effort hasgone into cards and terminals and 20% into theback end. At Axiomatique, they have been putting90% of their R&D into the back end. Withfocused groups of programmers, concentrating ontheir special areas, we can put the two sides togetherand be more powerful across the board.Several US banks have announced they are to issueEMV smart payment cards. Have you agreed thismerger to be ready to move into the US market?Large numbers of smart cards are being issued inthe US; I wouldn’t say yet that this is a solid take-off. But the US is the world’s biggest market –50% of all credit cards are issued in the US. Andas far as promotional marketing is concerned,which is where we come in, the US is a verymature market. The merger with Axiomatiquehelps us in the international race betweencompanies in our line of business to achievecritical mass. Welcome and Axiomatiquetogether are much less sensitive to regional slow-downs than our competitors. We are notdependent on single markets. We have diversesources of revenue, we are building expertise andwe are generating cash. This will be the benefitfor our customers and will stand us in good steadwhen the US market really does take off.Has the merger with Axiomatique put an end to thestandards initiative (with Welcome and Axiomati-que as major players) announced earlier this year?Not at all. We agreed broad merger terms withAxiomatique in January this year. Proposals forinteroperable standards for loyalty cards havebeen pursued as a separate initiative.What about the cards? You have said in the past thefinancial card industry does not need to wait severalyears for multi-application cards to drop in price.Yes, I still believe this to be the case. We do offerloyalty systems that run on Java and Multosmulti-application cards, but we see banks inTurkey and Asia running successful loyaltypackages on ‘old-fashioned’ proprietary cards. What is the message you are sending out throughyour takeover of Axiomatique?It is a benefit for our customers to have a largeprovider of loyalty systems who has diverse sourcesof revenue, expertise and positive cash flow.

CCoonnttaacctt:: Aneace Haddad at Welcome R-t, Tel: +33 442 97 58 62, www.welcome-rt.com

Why Welcome Real-time istaking over Axiomatique Aneace Haddad, CEO of Welcome, explains thelogic behind the takeover

Paving the way for customers’ smart card projects Martine Guignard, who heads up Oberthur Advise, outlines her plans for the newly formedconsultancy division of Oberthur Card Systems.

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