Contact evaluation process for ICC cards

IC cards are thoroughly tested before market emission. To help card manufacturers with the optimization of the quality of their products and to reduce time to market, ELITT provides functional evaluations of the cards under development.

The functional evaluation of contact payment cards consists of various steps. Most of them have different nomenclatures depending on the payment scheme that defines the evaluation of their cards, however schematically the following verifications exist.

• Functional qualifications test the different applications that are present on a chip. Different payment schemes may have their applications present on one and the same chip and the coexistence and proper functioning of these applications is verified. ELITT specializes in functional qualifications for contact applications:
  • Visa, MasterCard and CB specifications, 
  • Moneo (electronic wallet on the French market),
  • Multi application masks
    Part of this qualification are verifications of the correct card personalization security implementations. 
     
• The compatibility between the ICC (Integrated Circuit Card) and payment terminals is verified during interoperability and integration tests. To ensure a representative coverage of all existing payment terminals, ELITT regularly analyses the total terminal field in France and adapts its RPF (Reference PlatForm) as suited. The interaction between terminals and cards as well as the corresponding logs are manually verified and analyzed by our experts.
• In parallel to the integration tests, the functional limits of the card are identified by electrical and environmental tests. Besides current resilience and electronic capacities of the ICC like the maximum and minimum input and output tensions on various ICC contacts, Latch-Up and Electro-Static Discharge (ESD) tests are realized according to applicable international standards. After all tests the cards should remain functional.
• Pre-deployment tests: For revolutionary and highly innovative card products subsequent verifications may be desired in order to ensure customer satisfaction and avoid field operation issues. During Pre-deployment tests the product is distributed on a small scale to terminal constructors, banks and/ or merchants. Identified volunteers may test the day to day use of the product or its utilization for a specific application. Their experiences and comments are analyzed and form an integral part of the evaluation of the card product.
• Final tests on embedded ICC are physical tests derived from the ISO 10363 series. Elitt realizes a large number of the described standardized tests in our laboratory for Physical Characterization.