Infineon Provides Security Chips to Net1 for South Africa’s Largest Government Smart Card Project

Infineon Technologies supplies the security chips for the largest government smart card project in South Africa. Through Net1 UEPS Technologies, the government body “SASSA” (South African Social Security Agency) is issuing biometrically secure EMV/UEPS debit chip cards for financial transactions of social grants across all of South Africa’s nine provinces. Infineon provides its SOLID FLASH™ SLE 77 security controller to Net1’s subsidiary Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), a leading payment service provider in South Africa, who is responsible for implementing this service for SASSA. The project started in April 2012. Net1 began issuing the first smart cards in June. The new smart card enables more than ten million South African citizens to securely receive their social grants on the issued chip cards with less administrative expenses.
The application is based on Infineon’s SOLID FLASH SLE 77 security controller equipped with asymmetric data encryption. This allows secure storage of data and identification of the card holder by fingerprints stored on the chip. The smart card system is based on Net1’s Universal Electronic Payment System, or UEPS, which is a biometric payment technology designed to provide financial services to citizens without access to a bank account.
SOLID FLASH products are offering significant value add like increased logistic flexibility and faster time to market. The market benefits from fast prototyping, sampling and programming. In addition, Infineon’s SOLID FLASH products offer security features such as encryption of the flash memory as well as a specific flash loader mechanism for secure flash memory programming and effective locking.