Whatever rumors the Runet has been giving rise to lately, diametrically opposed opinions literally tear apart the news feeds: sometimes in Russia they know how to make chips, sometimes they don’t; then they switched to the use of components due to shortages, then they finally figured out natural processes and throw a good product into waste.
Who is right? Who is guilty? What to do and how does everyone notice it with you and me?
Let’s try to understand one of the most scandalous topics: what is really happening with bank cards in the country and in general.
How a bank card works
A standard modern bank card consists of
- case – actually a plastic card from 2 halves-layers;
- magnetic stripe for storing user IDs;
- chips for storing user identifiers and communicating with an ATM;
- NFC chips for wireless data transfer.
However, this has not always been the case.
The simplest bank card is just a plastic card with a bandwidth, on which the owner data, number and system magnetic identifiers are found in an encoded form. Now such releases are becoming rarer, but cards 3-5 years old can do without a chip.
Remember when they were not inserted into the input device, and were not even inserted into a special groove, but simply through special slots in the cash register?
Nevertheless, even today most of the plastic cards are equipped with a magnetic strip – not all cash desks have received NFC support, but specific models are found at every turn. Many manufacturers prefer to upgrade them rather than releasing fundamentally new ones.
By the way, it was the work with manufacturers of magnetic cards that at one time gave Samsung smartphones and smart watches an advantage: Samsung Pay contactless payment technology, unlike representatives, does not use an NFC chip, but emulation of magnetic stripe data transmission.
Some time after the cards received a chip – a microcircuit made according to the 90-180 nanometer process technology. It is based on the same data that was previously stored only on the magnetic segment, but with improved security protocols and high encryption.
Encryption protocols, standard addresses for checking balances and making transfers – all this is found in encrypted form on a magnetic stripe or in a chip.
Finally, a couple of years ago, almost all new bank cards received an antenna for transmitting data using the NFC protocol – a short-range communication with which data from new generation chips with waiting for support can be transmitted to up to 5 people.
Support for wireless transmission is not required: you can find a card without a schematic drawing of a radio wave both in Russia (many MIR cards) and abroad (American Express for example).
According to statistics, the lion’s share of contactless cards is used in Russia, since in our use NFC payments have a high probability of availability over the past 2 years.
Does Russia have its own chips for cards?
Thus, the creation of a plastic bank card compiled from results:
- make a magnetic stripe
- make a chip
- bring components
- install in a previously cast housing
- protest performance
To indicate, 1 and 2 specialized enterprises are needed – sensitive instrument-making complexes with the main ones for the production and verification of manufactured microcircuits. In Russia, they are, and unlike many other types of use, under the bank card operations of well-established production.
The first manufacturer of chips for bank cards was the company “Micron”since 2005, SIM-cards, which have been produced on the premises in Zelenograd, since 2015, microcircuits for bank cards (and many other microelectronic products, which are discussed elsewhere).
A successful example of an experiment in a new dimension – “Mikron” was opened as a branch of the Research Institute of Molecular Electronics since 1967 without cessation of activity.
It was Mikron, as part of JSC Research Institute of Molecular Electronics (NIIME), that developed and put into production the first domestic chip for MIR bank cards and its more advanced counterpart with support for contactless payment, which replaced the previously popular Cosmo (Obertur) chips on the Russian market . , France), Optelio (Thales, France) and Kona (Kona, South Korea).
Representatives of the manufacturing company, which supplied about 600,000 chips in the period from January to May 2022, which were naturally transferred in the form of cards. In addition, production is actively scaling up: today the required capacity of Mikron is 20 million chips for bank cards.
The second Russian supplier is Angstrem-T: back in 2016, the company mastered the mass production of A-400 microcircuits, an application for the card of the MIR payment system by order of the national payment card system (NPCS). After the company, a default was expected, but today it is working again and is actively engaged in the production of products.
There are a little more details about this edition: for example, it is known that the scheme uses international blocks, but the reliability and effectiveness on the territory of Russia. The characteristics of the chip exceed both Russian and foreign counterparts: a 32-bit processor, a modular arithmetic accelerator for implementing hardware encryption, 400 kilobytes of non-volatile memory, support for contactless data exchange ISO 1443 type A – and all this for a data transfer rate of up to 848 Kbps.
In addition, the development of events may lead to a change in the composition of the bank card of the imported Gemalto EMV chip, which, according to Edward Snowden, are a potential backdoor.
So, we decided on the chips – we are doing our job. What about magnetic tapes, wireless antennas, and card “cases”?
Where in Russia are plastic cards issued?
It would be strange to release the filling and not develop the final assembly of cards, especially since there are a huge number of banks in Russia that require the release of products with a design processor. The warning about the appointment of rainfall is also not a concern – the arrival from China requires a long, complex and laborious distribution. If you take under the client.
Orders of banks (and not only, because these bank cards work in passes videos and not only) are executed by 4 companies.
1. ALIOT
Russian manufacturer of bank cards of Visa, Mastercard, JCB, UnionPay and MIR payment systems. Equally important is the EMV SCOne payment product line and the ALIOTH l PAY branded tokenization service.
The company’s products are represented in 20 countries around the world, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, India, even the UK.
Among the “chips” of the brand is its own capacity for the production of plastic and metal cards, payment rings and other accessories based on partners’ chips.
2. NovaCard
The Nizhny Novgorod company has been manufacturing payment, transport and SIM cards, as well as accessories for checkpoints for 20 years. There is also a range of RFID solutions for retail.
In 2004, NovaCard immediately became the first company to receive the approval of a Russian company and sign a partner program using payment functions – Visa International and MasterCard International. In 2007, she began working with American Express.
In addition, the company itself is the software that contacts to become one of the first manufacturers of the MIR payment system.
3. Orenkart
The enterprise located in Orenburg is capable of producing up to 150 million cards per year and can be considered one of the few.
Unlike representatives, Orenkart positions itself not only as a supplier of bank cards, but also as a powerful printing production. Yes, yes, it was here that the multi-colored plastic means of payment of some very popular banks were discovered.
Another important segment of the brand is the issue of discount cards. Among the representatives of this direction, representatives name almost all federal retail networks.
4. Rosan finance
Contrary to competitors, business owners prefer to position themselves as manufacturers of “luxury” bank cards and jewelry with access to wireless payment.
Manufactured products with inserts of valuable and precious stones, precious alloys attract attention with their design and truly luxurious performance.
The assortment of brands and more prosaic items, such as leather bracelets with a built-in module for wireless payment, has the same interesting eco-friendly line.
There is a deficit. And there are cards. Why?
In the first months of 2022, Russian banks demanded 120 million payment cards. Zelenograd “Mikron” launched only 20 million chips without the participation of production. Obviously not enough power.
With the production of Angstrem-T, it is still more difficult: at the indicated moment, the plant does not offer its products on the market, does not mention active deliveries and ready-made cards, and actively establishes that there is no consumption for the distribution of subsidy emissions. Whether they will, in some sense and when, is not known at the moment.
Thus, taking into account the capacity of Micron, the deficit is 100 million chips. And that’s a lot. The situation is far from critical and the need for a physical map.
- the card is not a one-day use item,
- banks are actively stocking up for the future in case of serious disruptions,
- current cards in the hands of the population received a medium renewal,
- online banking in Russia continues to work.
It sounds strange, but 20 million card issues will be enough for 1/7 of the country’s population. Do you need a pack of cards in your wallet – a rhetorical question, and for most of our readers it has long been resolved.
The fact is that the country has the production capacity of the necessary technical process, and there are no bans on the purchase of rigid models of familiar technical processes yet. Therefore, in good scenarios, within a few years, all Russian cards will “move” to Russian chips.
Unless, of course, profitable Chinese (already actively used) will not be in a better position for a long time. As it will be in practice – we’ll see. A start.
Source: Iphones RU
