Success Stories

Integrated Printing Solutions enters lucrative secure gift card market with help from Prime Factors

Integrated Printing Solutions worked hard to gain entry into the secure gift card market, and faced one last challenge - implementing the capability of creating security codes (CVVs).

"Our original intent was to write the algorithm," said Scott Bennett, Vice President of Operations. Instead, Bennett contacted Prime Factors, which develops the Bank Card Security System (BCSS), a software package that includes sophisticated key management. BCSS is essential to the secure personalization process, providing a cost-effective alternative to the custom programming ordinarily used to create card security codes (CVC, CVV, CSC, etc.) and PINs.

"It was exactly what we were looking for and the price was right," Bennett said.

BCSS Used by Market Leaders
Equally important, said Bennett, was that, BCSS is used by many well-known card issuing companies such as TSYS, GE Money, VCT/Qualteq and Global Card Services. Some of these companies use more BCSS functionality than IPS such as the ability to work with the Thales HSM 8000 to meet security requirements established by Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover.

"We were just getting into the secure market, and we wanted to make sure we picked a company that was well established," Bennett said. "The vendor search and selection process turned out to be a relatively simple, which was very fortunate, because we didn't have a lot of time."

IPS' IT Manager implemented BCSS within two weeks by reading the user manual. He was ready when the customer provided the keys necessary to generate the CVVs.

"The documentation plus the intuitive layout of the program was enough to cover initial configuration, getting keys entered, and generating CVVs for the first test file from the client," the IT Manager said.

Key Management Was Easy to Set Up
The IT Manager gives high marks to the key management capabilities of BCSS. Setting up key management was especially easy.

"It took a very short time to figure out how to set up devices and network records, and to get the key information entered into the configuration utility," he said. "It was easy to determine 'what goes where.' We were using BCSS in production almost immediately after getting the key information from the client."

"The initial run of CVVs paid for the software," Bennett said. "As our business grows it makes the purchase a wise investment."

BCSS also gives IPS the software functionality necessary to expand its business into the lucrative consumer transaction card market. IPS is taking the necessary steps to become a Visa certified secure personalization bureau.

"BCSS is great for a medium-size business like IPS coming through the ranks," Bennett said. "What's important to us is that as we grow, BCSS can accommodate that growth."

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