Libercard lets Brazilians ride transit and make contactless payments, top-ups at retailers using a single prepaid contactless card

Fortaleza, Brazil, October 7th, 2008–Libercard, ViVOtech and Inteligensa today announced that they have collaborated to develop the first Transit & Retail combination contactless payment implementation in Latin America. With the new technology, Brazilians in the city of Fortaleza use a single contactless payment card to ride local transit and make retail purchases. Libercard has enabled tens of thousands of transit riders with dual-purpose prepaid contactless cards to ride transit, pay for purchases and perform top-ups at several hundred retail stores in Fortaleza that use ViVOtech contactless payment devices implemented with Inteligensa integration expertise.

“With over 2 million contactless prepaid cards being used in for public transit in Fortaleza today it just makes sense to extend this easy and convenient payment solution beyond transportation and into our retail stores,” explains Junia Moreira, Partner and Director of Libercard. “A large number of our transit riders are part of the unbanked population of Brazil and the ability to use prepaid accounts gives them a safe and easy way to pay for their day-to-day purchases. In just 3 months time Libercard had over 2.5 million dollars in purchases with the first 20,000 pilot cards and plans to issue another 120,000 cards through the end of the year, eventually fully replacing the 1.5 M transit only cards with Libercard dual use cards.”

“This deployment marks the beginning of a new era in payments in Latin America. The success in Fortaleza demonstrates the enormous potential that contactless payment solutions have in reaching out to unbanked populations in developing countries with new financial services and readies the ecosystem for future expansion of payments using NFC-enabled mobile phones,” said Mohammad Khan, President and Founder of ViVOtech.

“As one of largest banking card manufacturers in the world and market leader in Latin America, Inteligensa is committed to leadership in technology innovation for banking and payment services across the region,” said Venanzio Cipolitti, President and CEO of the Inteligensa Group. “We are leveraging new technologies such as contactless and NFC in Latin America to deliver valuable services to consumers in implementations that meet the unique requirements and realities of the region such as in the Libercard project.”

This Fortaleza pilot is very the first implementation in Latin America of a combined contactless payment card for transit and retail use. ViVOtech’s ViVOpay 5000 readers accept prepaid payments for purchases and re-loading both transit and payment accounts is available at all retailer locations. ViVOpay’s technology supports future expansion of the project to include branded contactless EMV payment cards and NFC mobile phone payments in addition to MiFare technology.

“We are growing very fast. The partnership with ViVOtech and Inteligensa gives us the technological support we need to move forward, expanding our activities and market leadership,” continued Libercard Partner and Director Junia Moreira. “After expanding in Fortaleza, we want to deploy this solution in other cities and states throughout Brazil and Latin America.”

For more information about the contactless payment solutions used in Fortaleza, go to http://www.vivotech.com, http://www.inteligensa.com and http://www.libercard.com.br,

About Libercard

Libercard is the new innovating concept from the Guanabara Group, a large Brazilian corporation dedicated to the mass transportation of passengers than more that 50 years. The group also has a successful performance in the fields of tourism, hotels, banking activities and commerce of vehicles.

Due to the synergies between the activities of the Guanabara group, the Libercard Company was created to design and deliver new product concepts that bridge credit cards, employee benefit management, transportation and more using advanced technology solutions.

The Inteligensa Group

INTELIGENSA GROUP is a leader in supplying payment systems and authentication solutions to big scale businesses in Latin America. Intelcav was founded in 2000 by Inteligensa and is a company of the Inteligensa Group. Today Intelcav is one of the top payment card manufacturers in the world and market leader in Latin America, with extensive experience in both contact and contactless chip cards. Intelcav is currently manufacturing and personalizing several million chip based payment cards monthly. The Inteligensa Group covers most of the Latin American territory as a multinational organization. Inteligensa is also very active in RFID solutions for the Industry, education and Health and is a major POS provider.

About ViVOtech

ViVOtech is the market leader in NFC mobile payments, promotions, Over-The-Air (OTA) provisioning infrastructure software, transaction management software, NFC smart posters and contactless terminals. These innovative payment solutions allow millions of consumers to make contactless transactions with radio frequency-enabled credit/debit cards, key fobs and NFC-enabled mobile phones. ViVOtech’s products are used by some of the most prominent retailers all over the globe and today the company has shipped over 450,000 contactless terminals to more than 30 countries worldwide. ViVOtech was named #1 for 2 years in a row (2007–2008) in ABI Research’s Contactless Reader Ranking Report. ViVOtech was also recognized as Top Contactless Payment Technology Vendor in Aberdeen Group’s “Retail Contactless Payment Report.” ViVOtech has received strategic investments from First Data Corporation, a leading provider of electronic and payment solutions for businesses worldwide, Citi, the leading global financial services company, NCR Corporation, a leading global technology company helping businesses build stronger relationship with their customers and Motorola, known globally for innovation and leadership in wireless and broadband communications. For more information about ViVOtech, visit: http://www.ViVOtech.com