Viva Technology, a major technology show, happened last week in Paris. For its second occurrence, the event succeeded in showcasing 6,000 startups to a public made of a combination of investors, technology companies, students, executives and even families … all in all over 60,000 visitors. The event is probably iconic of the ongoing changes in France. The new president declared: “France is becoming the nation for startups and must succeed in this challenge”. The companies that participated in Viva Technology are probably the best incarnation of these changes. Bringing together in Paris speakers like Daniel Zhang (Alibaba Group), Eric Schmidt (Alphabet), John Collison (Stripe), SY Lau (Tencen
Our secure transactions industry has completed a new round of restructuring. The Safran Group had been looking for an acquirer for months or even years for its Morpho unit, until the decision was announced in October 2016: Advent, which owns Oberthur was to acquire the Safran I&S (Identity & Security) unit. The European competition authorities decided they approved the merger with a single exception: the banking card personalization activities in France, known as CPS Technologies. The final part of the news comes up this week: CPS Technologies is acquired by G+D (Giesecke & Devrient). After this move, the industry evolves from four to three players: Gemalto, OT-Morpho (which will get a new n
Until now, consumer behavior analysis was working fine for online commerce, but facing some major issues for brick and mortar commerce: its was difficult to reconcile data obtained from online research and eCommerce with physical purchases. Players in the payment industry just obtained the total amount paid at the cash register without being able to know each person consumption details. For long, loyalty programs have allowed merchants and their partners, to gather purchase details of their customers. A new step is coming now as purchase tracking is about to be available for all consumers and for all purchases. Google just announced it was able to determine how many sales had been generated
Even if many of us are busy with new technology developments and market research on new opportunities, the smart card remains the bread and butter of our industry. Eurosmart, the association of the major players in the secure transactions industry, or the “Voice of the Smart Security Industry,” as the association calls itself, publishes its market evaluation and forecasts twice a year. The spring issue gives 2016 results and 2017 forecasts, is covered in detail here. Over years, the association has had to adapt to the evolutions of the market and now talks about billions of secure elements, including all types of form factors from smart cards to embedded secure elements in smartphones, table
