London, U.K, 20 Jan 2004 - Thyron Systems, the specialist provider of terminals and applications for secure mobile transactions, today announced that it has been granted full EMV Level 1 certification for its secure PayCell IFM (InterFace Module) deployed in its new PayCell MPT500® mobile payment terminal and PosMate 100 PIN Pad.

Thyron Systems, the specialist provider of terminals and applications for secure mobile transactions, today announced that British Airways has placed two new orders with the company; for the Financer and PayCell terminals. 

British Airways has been using Thyron’s Financer portable smart card terminals for some time as a significant component of its Chip Cash Project. The smart card e-payment application is used to provide electronic cash to passengers who are given ex gratia compensation payments for delays in delivery of baggage, flights or the cancellations to flights. These payments are disbursed on a BA smart card that is loaded with value, customer details, flights numbers and other information, using the Financer terminal. Once the value is redeemed, currencies and transaction details are recorded, which allows BA to maintain a full audit trail and has contributed significantly to the control and management from the previous paper based system.

The Financer portable card reader offers extensive features and capabilities, including; a full alphanumeric keypad, Smart and Magnetic card interfaces, internal high speed modem and rechargeable battery technology.

The PayCell terminals ordered by BA are to be utilised for the company’s Hotel Smart project. These terminals are being placed in hotels around the world where BA crew stay during flight stopovers. The terminals will record any expenditure by crew using their BA cards whilst staying in the hotels. These transactions are sent back to BA via the PayCell terminal modem link, which then allows BA to balance the expenditure by the staff member against their personal allowances. “The PayCell terminal being portable and easy to use is particularly suited to BA’s requirements. The new order for our terminals by BA, re-affirms the company’s confidence in our technology”, comments Gerry Flanagan, CEO at Thyron Systems.

Both Chip Cash and Hotel Smart have already been successfully deployed in airports and hotels throughout the BA network, supporting a reduction in administrative time and costs from both solutions. "The Thyron solution was not only extremely easy to use, but the terminals also provided the additional flexibility we required” said Neville Stone, Manager of Card Operations at BA. “Furthermore, Thyron devices support GSM/GPRS. This means we could, in the future, implement a remote data gathering system, rather than rely on a fixed link to download data from the terminal, as we do at present” he added.  

 The EMV application kernel in Thyron’s PayCell terminal, the most widely used GSM enabled payment terminal of it’s type in the UK, has been granted full approval by EMVCo for EMV level 2 to include the new additional Errata specifications. 

EMVCo introduced the new Errata specifications as an addition to the 3.1.1. Level 2 certification process to ensure full card scheme interoperability.

Thyron Systems has submitted and achieved full certification for the Errata extensions from EMVCo for the EMV software kernel provided on the PayCell terminal, thus ensuring the PayCell can be used to support full card acceptance and EMV interoperability in its current use or in any specific EMV roll out.

Kalim Qureshi, Director of Technology at Thyron states “By continuing to ensure our software and hardware meets the latest standards mandated by industry bodies such as EMVCo continues to provide assurance to our clients that Thyron products remain at the forefront of the emerging EMV global Chip migration roll outs”