U.S. Contactless Card Vendor Adds NXP as Chip Supplier
CPI Card Group, the largest supplier of contactless payment cards in the U.S. market, has announced it would begin buying contactless chips from NXP Semiconductors, which would represent a new second source of supply.
U.S.-based CPI, which told NFC Times it shipped 35 million contactless bank cards in the United States last year, mainly uses chips from France-based Inside Secure.
Benoît Guez, director of smart cards and new technologies for CPI, said the card vendor would continue to source about 90% of its contactless chips from Inside, but around 10% would come from NXP. CPI had been using On Track Innovations as its second source of supply, with a Renesas Electronics chip, said Guez.
The move could give NXP and its Fast Pay contactless chip a little bit more of a foothold in the North American contactless payment card market, where Inside has long dominated with its MicroPass chip. NXP began supplying Germany-based card vendor Giesecke and Devrient with some contactless chips for North America in 2009. NXP and Inside also are rivals in the NFC chip market.
CPI also announced it would buy contactless prelaminates from Germany-based KSW Microtec.
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