Former Central Bank (CBN) Governor, Chief Joseph Sanusi unveiled a new highly secured card payment system built with biometric features into the Nigerian financial landscape by an indigenous IT and finance firm, ChamsSwitch, a subsidiary of Chams Plc.

At the Logo unveiling ceremony which took place in Abuja, Chief Joseph Sanusi, in company of Mr. Demola Aladekomo, the Managing Director of the Parent Company, Chams Plc, noted that the new payment instrument is intended to ensure secure transactions by holders as it has enhanced security strategies and is not prone to abuse by another person like the current payment cards.

As Company(ChamsSwitch l) Chairman, Sanusi gave more insight into the ChamsSwitch payment devise: "This new addition is emerging from the future to change the landscape of transaction switching business in Nigeria.’’

"ChamsSwitch is a child of necessity borne out of the need to provide services, seen to be lacking among the present players in the industry and to provide the consuming public the quality of service they rightly deserve.

"The Chams family has not deviated from its commitment to excellence. The ChamsSwitch vision is to be a world class company that provides the most convenient way to pay for anything to any entity.

Wherever you are, whatever your line of business, ChamsSwitch will provide you the convenience and safety of making payments to any entity of your choice.

"We are not only changing the face of the industry, our solutions and services cut across all sectors of the economy. We have built an enabling infrastructure to support our key public sector projects. Notable among these public sector projects is the concession awarded the Chams Consortium by the Federal Government to issue the new national identity cards.

These chip based ID cards with full proof biometric data capture, will have payment capabilities that will ride on the trusted ChamsSwitch backbone. Tens of millions of these payment-enabled ID cards will be issued in the coming months which will open a world of business opportunities for banks, government agencies, merchants as well as small and medium scale businesses.

"We have continued in our culture of innovation to deploy the most modern and resilient platform in the industry. ChamsSwitch runs on Base24 EPS, an integrated payment engine designed to acquire, authenticate, route, switch, and authorize financial transactions across multiple channels. This product which represents the next-generation of world-class payments platform is designed by ACI, a worldwide leader in transaction switching solutions, drawing on nearly 30 years experience in payments software manufacture. ACI¢s solutions are currently being used by most leading banks worldwide and by VISA and MasterCard.

The robust BASE24-eps platform is uniquely built for safety, reliability and flexibility. It offers customers improved profitability through an enriched customer service, a wide range of product offerings and resultant market dominance. It boasts of advanced safety features supporting chip and pin as well as magnetic stripe card transactions and is compatible with other solutions deployed by banks and other switches in Nigeria.

"Key services to be offered on the ChamsSwitch platform include: Driving of ATMs and POS devices as well as mobile and web transactions; Card issuance; Third party transaction processing and Bill and revenue collection services.’’