Officials said the first cards featuring the new chips could be issued by this autumn.

Semiconductor firm Mikron Group has unveiled a new breed of microchip designed to be used in Russian bank-issued credit and debit cards, which will be introduced for use with the country's new National Card Payment System (NCPS) later this year.

According to Izvestia, Mikron's new chip has been domestically developed using only Russian technology, and is a capable alternative to rival chips from companies like Atmel in the U.S., Infineon in Europe, and Samsung and Renesas in Asia.

Mikron said the chip has also been certified according to the Europay Mastercard Visa (EMV) technical standard, which means Russian bank cards using it can work in foreign countries.

“The first version of banking software will be designed for contact technologies, later there will be a version supporting contactless technologies,” said Aleksey Dianov, a spokesperson for Mikron. He added that Mikron expects the first batch of cards with the new chip, numbering in the tens of thousands, to be issued as early as this autumn.

Explaining Mikron's motivation for building the chips, Dianov said it was in line with Russian efforts to become self-reliant in the technology sphere.

“When using imported chips, it is necessary to pay royalties to the foreign holders of cryptographic algorithms, which do not correspond to Russian state standards; additionally, foreign chips could also become subject to an embargo or import restrictions,” Dianov said.

“Complete domestic development and production guarantees the continuous availability of chips for the Russian banking system. In addition, the issue of chips made in Russia is in keeping with the program of substituting imported products for domestic ones.”

Dianov said that Russians needed to have confidence the chips built into Russian bank cards don't contain any “backdoors” that could somehow allow foreign countries to snoop on people's financial data. With foreign chips, and in light of the Edward Snowden revelations, foreign products carry the risk of having “undocumented features” that could allow people's transactions to be monitored, he said.

The NCPS has already been handling Mastercard payments made within Russia since May of this year, and the first issue of new cards for the system is planned for December. The cards will be able to handle all types of transactions, such as cash withdrawals, store purchases, mobile phone payments, and contactless payments.

Officials have previously expressed hopes that the NCPS will capture half of the Russian payment card market by 2018. Currently, there are some 227 million credit and debit cards in use in Russia today.

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