Bank Card Issuing & Processing

Prime Factors Bank Card Security System (BCSS) is used by card issuers, secure personalization bureaus and card processors to reduce the amount of programming required to create a system for issuing secure cards, and processing transactions.

Leading card issuers and secure personalization bureaus around the world use BCSS to produce secure financial transaction cards (credit, debit, prepaid and gift). They use the cost-effective software because BCSS is a lower cost alternative to the custom programming ordinarily used to implement key management, and to create card security codes and PINs.

In addition, acquirers and card processors use BCSS to verify card transactions. BCSS decrypts PIN blocks and verifies security codes. The verification process begins when a point-of-sale device encrypts the cardholder PIN block, and sends it to the issuing bank or processing center. BCSS sends the encrypted PIN block, secret keys and security information to the Thales HSM.  The PIN block is decrypted inside the HSM so that the PIN and keys are never in the clear. The expected security code is compared to the one in the transaction. If there's a match, the transaction is approved.

Customers rely on BCSS to keep them current with the latest security standards established by Visa®, MasterCard®, Discover® and American Express®. BCSS also keeps issuers and acquirers current with security requirements for different types of plastic media: magnetic-stripe cards, smartcards (chip cards) or contactless cards (EMV and RFID cards).

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