" ITREALMS: FCTA launches GMP cards

Thursday, November 16, 2006

FCTA launches GMP cards

Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has launched a General Multi-Purpose Card (GMPC).

This was facilitated by a leading turn-key and innovative chip card solutions provider, SecureID Limited in Abuja.

The authorities said this would enthrone the city as the first Nigeria’s e-government multi-application smart cards implementation.

GMPC, is an innovative e-government and high-profile initiative in the multimedia smart card industry, which in the case of FCTA, was designed and executed by SecureID team.

The card, according to management of SecureID is a strong credit card-sized plastic with embedded microchip, mifare contactless chip and magnetic stripe, which is deployable globally and comes with about 8 kilobytes of JAVA.

Managing Director, SecureID, Mrs. Kofo Akinkugbe, said that the card allows the card issuer to easily append applications to the card after issuance and makes use of biometric technology for identification.

Also, Mrs. Akinkugbe said the project is a single but multi-application card that could be used for the purposes of identifications, access control, Automated Teller Machines (ATM) cashcard and even personnel management functions.

“GMPC supports easy and flexible payment and can be used on any ATM on the Interswitch network,” she said.

Storage of data on the card, she explained affords users the 32k memory chip on the card is used to store the bio-data of the cardholder, his or her human resource (HR) management, fingerprints and other biometric features.

Mrs. Akinkugbe equally noted that the card’s contact-less chip enables authorization commands for access control, just as the chip feature facilitates SecureID to transfer the GPMC to smartcard platform as demand increases and the nation adopts the Europay, MasterCard & Visa (EMV) solutions.

For Mallam Nasiru el-Rufai, the Minister of Federal Capital Development Authority, speaking on GMPC, it is an indication of how the new Nigeria Identity Card project should look like.

This, he said, would replace the old plastic identity card used by over 20,000 work force in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The project regarded as a multi-application card that serves as identification, access control, payroll/salary as well as in pension management, just as the card could serve as electronic payment device and accommodates other government applications in the future.



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