Emue seeks authentication flight path

Deloitte Australia is looking for a buyer for its stake in Emue Technologies, a supplier of payment authentication solutions that counts Visa Europe as its major supporter.

Emue emerged from Deloitte's internal incubator program in the early to mid-2000s. Visa Europe bought a stake in the company in the late 2000s.

Deloitte, which publicised the search for a new owner yesterday, said one rationale was to allow Emue to market its products to customers of the accounting firm (something not practical at present given potential conflicts of interest).

Gresham Partners is acting for Emue and Deloitte.

Brendan McKeegan, chief executive of Emue, said several banks in Europe had issued credit cards to around 100,000 customers that include - embedded within the card - Visa's CodeSecure product.

McKeegan said banks in Italy, Switzerland and Turkey were issuing the cards to select customer segments in batches of between one thousand and 10,000. He said more banks also had plans to issue cards using CodeSecure, which Visa's member banks started to pick up only eight months ago.

IP Australia has so far granted one patent to Emue over its authentication solutions. IP Australia rejected five other applications while three more remain under review.