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Press Release
Source: Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments to Deliver RFID Solution for MasterCard PayPass
Monday January 17, 10:00 am ET
DALLAS, Jan. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Instruments today announced plans to
deliver ISO/IEC 14443 compliant radio frequency identification (RFID) chips
designed to meet the stringent security requirements for MasterCard
International's PayPass(TM) line of RFID payment cards and tokens. TI
expects to submit this product for MasterCard certification in the second
quarter of 2005. Full production is planned to start in the second half of
this year
TI's new 13.56 MHz RFID chip is the latest to be introduced in a series of
solutions based on the company's ISO/IEC 14443 technology platform. This
proven platform features products with universally accepted and
standardized cryptography, using National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) approved crypto algorithms, including Triple DES and
SHA-1.
The ISO/IEC 14443 standard allows for this increased level of security
because it supports significantly faster rates of data exchange (up to 848
kbits per second), enabling more complex security information to be passed
between an RFID card and reader without affecting the user's experience. As
an added feature, read ranges for products based on the ISO/IEC 14443
platform are also limited to 4 centimeters (roughly 1.5 inches), further
increasing the security of the transaction.
As credit and bank card issuers expand pilots throughout the United States
and into other countries, the opportunity for TI to serve this market with
its secure ISO/IEC 14443 solutions is significant. The December 2004 Nilson
Report indicates that payment card manufacturers shipped 4.38 billion units
to card issuers (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, Discover,
JCB, and ATM cards) and retailers (both credit and pre-paid cards) in 2003.
In the first half of 2004, MasterCard's customer financial institutions
worldwide had issued more than 627.5 million MasterCard-branded cards, a
6.6% increase over the same period in 2003, according to an August 2004
MasterCard press release.
"The financial services industry recognizes that ISO/IEC 14443-based RFID
solutions provide the stringent levels of security required for conducting
payment transactions," said Shawn Rogers, director, wireless commerce and
Tag- it(TM) products, Texas Instruments RFid Systems. "With our heritage in
pioneering technologies in new markets, we're working with leading bank
card issuers and credit card companies to bring these highly reliable and
secure RFID solutions to this market."
About Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments is the world's largest integrated manufacturer of radio
frequency identification (RFID) transponders and reader systems.
Capitalizing on its competencies in high-volume semiconductor manufacturing
and microelectronics packaging, TI is a visionary leader and at the
forefront of establishing new markets and international standards for RFID
applications. For more information, contact TI-RFid Systems at
1-888-937-6536 (North America) or +1 972-575-4364 (International), or visit
the Web site at http://www.ti-rfid.com.
Texas Instruments Incorporated provides innovative DSP and analog
technologies to meet our customers' real world signal processing
requirements. In addition to Semiconductor, the company's businesses
include Sensors & Controls, and Educational & Productivity Solutions. TI is
headquartered in Dallas, Texas and has manufacturing, design or sales
operations in more than 25 countries. Texas Instruments is traded on the
New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located
on the World Wide Web at http://www.ti.com.
Source: Texas Instruments
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R. A. Hettinga