Secure Card Manufacturing

Prime Factors provides software and expertise that has helped many companies make a smooth entry into the lucrative secure card manufacturing market. Since 1999, industry leaders and new entrants alike, have used the Bank Card Security System (BCSS) to reduce programming costs and expedite time to market.

BCSS provides an immediate ROI when compared to the only alternative – custom programming to implement key management, and to create security codes and PINs. This functionality is required to pass a security audit to become certified by the network brands (Visa®, MasterCard®, Discover®, American Express®, etc.). Because security standards can change, customers depend on BCSS to keep them current with the latest security requirements established by the card associations.

Arroweye Solutions implemented BCSS after a thorough evaluation of the cost of developing a custom solution. Brian Huse, chief information officer and vice president of research and development, led the Visa certification project to become a secure card manufacturer. He found that the traditional path of in-house custom programming was not only expensive, but it would not allow Arroweye to get to market fast enough. Huse determined that if Arroweye implemented BCSS, it could both meet its market strategy and bring the project in at merely 25 percent of the cost of developing the software internally.

Huse said buying BCSS was the obvious choice, especially when he discovered that Prime Factors offered the only off-the-shelf solution for the open loop payment card market.

“Not only did BCSS save us money,” Huse said, “it also turned a six month, in-house development project into a six-week project.”

Many customers new to secure card manufacturing rely on Prime Factors to help them implement BCSS and pass their security audits.

“We really needed help because of our unfamiliarity with the secure personalization process,” said a BCSS customer. “Prime Factors had the knowledge of the process, and software that already does everything.”

For example, the card associations require secure card manufacturers to use hardware security modules (HSMs). BCSS includes subroutines that make Thales HSMs work in accordance with card association regulations. Therefore, BCSS eliminates the need to know Thales’ proprietary host commands including those to generate card security codes (CVVs, CVCs, CSCs, CAVVs, CVC3, dCVV, PVVs and PINs) as well as others to prepare EMV data and validate EMV security codes.

Contact us today to learn why BCSS is the preferred solution for secure card manufactures who generate card security codes and PINs.

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