Proton was a

stored-value card A stored-value card (SVC) or cash card is a payment card with a monetary value stored on the card itself, not in an external account maintained by a financial institution. This means no network access is required by the payment collection termi ...

payment system in

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

from 1995 until 2014. It was introduced with the goal to replace cash primarily for small transactions around €15. For security, the card was limited to storing 125

EUR The euro (symbol: €; currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the euro area or, more commonly, the eurozone. The euro is divided into 10 ...

of available electronic cash (originally 5,000 BEF). The card was used for small payments without a pin code or signature, and users ran the same risk as with cash in that if the card was lost the cash value allocated to it would also be lost. The advantage to merchants was that they could accept payments without the necessity for a bank terminal to be connected to a centralised system for approving the transaction (the transaction was approved by the card itself), and the transaction was very quick. In August 1998, Proton World International was founded, a joint venture between Banksys, Visa, American Express and EGR. The goal was to promote the Proton technology worldwide. In 2001, the Australian company ERG bought the remaining shares of Proton World and became the sole shareholder, making a $50 million loss two years later by selling it to

STMicroelectronics STMicroelectronics Naamloze vennootschap, NV (commonly referred to as ST or STMicro) is a European multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the largest of such companies in Europe. ...

. Proton saw limited success in Belgium, possibly due to a poor understanding of the system, despite being commonly available on

parking meter A parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to Parking, park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. Parking meters can be used by Municipality, municipalities as a tool for enforcing their i ...

s and pay phones, and within

convenience store A convenience store, convenience shop, bakkal, bodega, corner store, corner shop, superette or mini-mart is a small retail store that stocks a range of everyday items such as convenience food, groceries, beverages, tobacco products, lotter ...

s. Despite this, the system was also implemented in other countries such as

Chipknip Chipknip (a portmanteau of ''Smart card, chip card'' and ''knip'', Dutch for coin purse, purse) was a Stored-value card, stored-value payment card system used in the Netherlands. Based on the Belgian Proton (debit card), Proton system, it was sta ...

in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, and was considered for other markets such as

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. Security was based on the

message authentication code In cryptography, a message authentication code (MAC), sometimes known as an authentication tag, is a short piece of information used for authentication, authenticating and Data integrity, integrity-checking a message. In other words, it is used t ...

. The system was retired on 31 December 2014. Customers are requested to offload the charged amount back onto their

bank account A bank account is a financial account maintained by a bank or other financial institution in which the financial transaction A financial transaction is an Contract, agreement, or communication, between a buyer and seller to exchange goods, ...

before the expiration date.

References

External links

* {{Credit cards Stored-value payment card