MasterCard PayPass™

Enabling secure, time-saving transactions for consumers is the foundation of MasterCard's PayPass™ contactless payment specification. PayPass also requires a wide range of flexibility in both design and functionality that only Texas Instruments (TI) can provide.

While enabling multiple form factors, including credit cards and key fobs, MasterCard wanted to be sure its credit cards continued to have the option of four lines of embossing. While this appears simple enough, that extra space is usually used to accommodate the contactless credit card's antenna.

TI’s 15 years of experience in the RF tag industry and its unique manufacturing capability provided the answer: an optimized chip coupled with a smaller antenna. TI is the only chip manufacturer that has vertically integrated the antenna into the product design for best-in-class performance and increased flexibility.

The PayPass inlay solution incorporates a secure, low-power microprocessor with an embedded PayPass application and a small-size radio frequency antenna into a thin, PVC pre-laminate sheet, or “pre-lam,” that can be easily integrated into standard card manufacturing production processes.

The secure microprocessor has been designed to meet the needs of the contactless payment infrastructure for the North American market. The inlay is small enough to enable four-line embossing, while continuing to support the four centimeter read range requirements of PayPass.

In addition, TI is the only semiconductor company to have its contactless payment technology certified for all three components of MasterCard PayPass conformity requirements, including Card Type Approvals for analog performance, digital and functional performance, and Compliance Assessment Security Testing.

As the contactless payment industry matures, TI will continue to innovate and offer a range of antenna and inlay designs for a variety of payment devices, including cards, key fobs and other form factors.