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A Special SCALA Announcement

The Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA) has selected its new Executive Committee for its Advisory Board. The following representatives were selected:

Chairman: Fernando Mendez, Visa Inc
Vice Chair: Karina Prado, G&D Burti
Secretary: Humberto de la Vega, HID Global

Observing General member: Vincent Tenaglia, GET Group
Observing Government member: Mauricio Augusto Coelho, Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia de Informação

Message from the Chairman

Dear Members and friends of the Smart Card Alliance Latin America

It is a privilege for me to be writing to you, as the new Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA).

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and say a few words about the Alliance’s direction and our commitment to continue helping to stimulate the understanding, adoption and widespread use of smart card technology.

First, let me say that I am very proud to be leading the Advisory Board. I have spent many years working in the smart card arena, particularly in the Financial Services industry and I have always recognized the big effort and complexity inherent to this industry. I should also mention that since last year I have had the opportunity to lead the work of SCALA’s Financial Payments Council.

SCALA Associate Director’s Letter

Dear Friends and Members of the Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA)

First of all, I would like to wish all of our newsletter readers a happy, healthy 2010, with great successes, minimal challenges, and enormous prosperity. As many of us are accustomed to setting goals for a New Year, I have written New Year’s resolutions for SCALA for activities the organization wants to accomplish in 2010. As with many of our own personal lists, some of these could be hard to achieve, but I am hopeful that with all your help and support, these goals can be managed correctly and accomplished.

The first goal is to increase awareness of the SCALA EMV Migration and Market Analysis Study for Mexico and Brazil. One of our missions as the industry association for smart cards is to expand the knowledge of the market not only to our members but to the entire market as well. The study that resulted from enormous efforts to organize, forecast, and obtain sensitive market information has still only had limited exposure to non-member companies. We feel that most companies in the payments industry would benefit greatly from the information presented and the acquisition of the study would help them better position their companies in the market.

Article: Mass transit adds more allies in Latin America

Contactless memory smart cards continue to drive high attention in Latin American. Public transport, and with it complementary key businesses such as retailers, ticketing for entertainment, sport clubs and healthcare associations present great business opportunities in the region.

Smart card market participants constantly look for emerging applications to enhance their products to avoid a fall into commodity status. This is why manufacturers tend to upgrade their business offering from hardware, to focusing in the offering and assessment of value-added services and the improvement of the user experience.

Upcoming events

• 3rd Annual Smart Card Alliance Payment Summit
  February 23-25, 2010
  Salt Lake City, Utah

• SCALA - Government ID Information Exchange
  March 22-26, 2010
  Panama City, Panama

• 3rd IT Forum - Banrisul
  April 5-6, 2010
  Porto Alegre, Brazil

• CARD 2010 - 15th Annual Event
  April 26-28, 2010
  Sao Paulo, Brazil

• Tarjetas y Medios de Pago 2010
  July 19-21, 2010
  Miami, Florida

• Card Meeting
  August
  Paraguay

• Congreso De Ciudadania Digital - Certforum
  Date TBD
  Brasilia, Brazil

• CLARCIEV
  Date TBD
  Location TBD

• CARTES 2010
  December 7-9
  Paris, France