Dear stakeholders of Zwipe,
Through the first half of 2021, our global payment ecosystem of Smart Card
Manufacturers, Payment Processors, Banks and Go-to-market Partners has continued
to expand at a rapid pace, further strengthening our foundation for future
market success. In these challenging times, our growing team of competent and
passionate Zwipers, spanning 14 different nationalities in nine
countries across three different continents and five time zones from Colorado
Springs to Singapore, has demonstrated exceptional teamwork with
a solid focus on customers. I am delighted to share that the
interest in biometric payment cards based on Zwipe technology, which deliver a
more convenient, secure and safe means to pay, has never been stronger. The
voices of consumers captured by Zwipe in the UK, USA, Canada, Sweden, Norway and
Romania since August last year are encouraging and consistent with
similar findings from card schemes and other industry players.
Entering the Indian subcontinent and APAC region
In the first half of 2021, we announced six
new Smart Card Manufacturers into our ecosystem:
·
KL HI Tech (https://www.biometricupdate.com/202104/zwipe-signs-up-indian-partner
-to-manufacture-biometric-payment-cards) in India
·
Beautiful Card Corporation (Zwipe Unveils Beautiful Partnership in Biometric Cards Effort
-partnership-in-biometric-cards-effort-7051101/) in Taiwan
·
Silkways Card and Printing Ltd (Zwipe Establishes Biometric Cards Partnership in Bangladesh
-biometric-cards-partnership-bangladesh-706162/)in Bangladesh
·
Three card manufacturers in Europe and Asia who at this stage want to remain
anonymous
Together, these manufacturers deliver around 200 million payment cards annually.
In addition, we extended and expanded our partnership with TAG Systems, who
delivers 100 million payment cards annually. Looking forward, it is great to see
that our SCM and processor and issuer pipelines continue to grow.
The encouraging developments with card manufacturers received a big boost
when Asia’s largest payment processor, Financial Software and
Systems (Zwipe ties up with FSS for global roll out of biometric cards
-global-roll-out-of-biometric-cards) (FSS) embraced our next-generation payment
cards platform based on Zwipe Pay ONE technology. FSS manages over 800 million
cards, and we are now working with them to bring our ground-breaking innovation
globally. We also strengthened our regional presence by appointing Masterline
and Sonali Intellect Ltd. as our business development partners in India and
Bangladesh, respectively.
Acceleration in the MENA Region and Europe
Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
On the back of growing demand for biometric payments cards in the MENA
region, Network International (Zwipe Adds Network International to Biometric Cards Partner Roster
-international-to-mea-partner-roster-for-biometric-cards-706281/) (NI),
providing payment services to over 200 banks in Middle East and Africa,
and Middle East Payment Services (Zwipe Gets MENA Distribution Partner for Biometric Card Solution
-distribution-partner-biometric-card-solution-76202103/) (MEPS), a leading
payment service provider in the Levant region, entered new partnerships with
Zwipe. NI and MEPS have boosted our reach and delivery capabilities in the MENA
Region, on top of our already strong network of prominent partners in the
region, notably Masria Digital Payments (Zwipe Teams with MEA Smart Card Firm on Biometric Payments
-partners-zwipe-biometric-payments
-032601/), Inkript (https://thepaypers.com/cards/inkript-zwipe-to-launch
-biometric-payment-cards–778700), areeba (Areeba to Offer Zwipe Biometric Payment Solutions to Banks
-offer-zwipe-biometric-payment-solutions-to-banks
-910147/) and Veritech (Zwipe Teams with VeriTech on Biometric Payment Cards Platform
-biometric-payment-cards-platform-912041/). To effectively serve our growing
partner network and issuers, we appointed Ramzi Saboury as the General Manager
for the MENA region. Ramzi brings over 26 years of experience and network in
payment services in MENA from leadership roles in Kuwaiti banks, VISA and
areeba.
Europe and the UK
In the past few months, we have seen an increasing in-flow of interest from card
manufacturers in multiple regions, most notably in Europe. The same can be said
for issuer engagements that come through our Processor Partners and Card
Manufacturers in Europe, especially in the UK and Nordics. This is proof that
our “Megaphone” partner strategy works! Swedish
fintech VOPY (Sweden’s Vopy to Launch 100,000 Zwipe-powered Biometric Cards By Year End
-biometric-cards-702191/), providing embedded financial services to clients
globally, and France-based payment service provider, be ys
Pay (https://www.cardsinternational.com/news/france-be-ys-pay-zwipe-biometric
-payment-cards/), selected Zwipe Pay ONE (ZPO) cards for their ssuers, aiming
to pilot Zwipe Pay ONE this year. Both these developments came within months of
OP Bank’s decision to pilot with cards based on the Zwipe Pay ONE platform
togheter with our Go-to-market partner, TietoEVRY. OP is Finland’s largest
financial services group and serves over four million customers.
Delivery of Zwipe Pay ONE on track
We had strong progress in the development of Zwipe Pay ONE, the world’s first
Single Silicon based biometric payment platform offered to card manufacturers
globally. In April 2021, we demonstrated our enrollment solution and touch-free
payment transactions above the transaction cap at a Point-of-Sales terminal with
test keys to emulate fully EMV authorized and authenticated transactions in a
live environment. The feedback from the market was very positive as everyone
could see how these cards quickly and reliably provide a considerable boost to
user experience and security.
In fact, we have now passed most critical milestones and major risk points,with
only piloting and certification left before commercialization in mass volumes.
Next steps - pilots and certification
Apart from pilots planned from late this quarter, certification will represent
the last milestone before commercialization. We have already performed pre-tests
at accredited test labs with excellent results.
We are now working closely with the card schemes to secure these processes,
which will be explained in detail during our H1 2021 reporting on 26 August. In
the coming weeks, we will start handing out Zwipe Pay ONE demo cards
to issuers and partners and continue to help them prepare for commercial
launches.