My first activity as consultant took place in 1985, as I was subcontracted by my company (BIK  in Frankfurt/Main at that time) as a consultant on HSM (Hardware Security Module) based trans-european payment schemes. The client was Europay in Brussels. In this mission, lasting 6 months, my role was to validate and audit the HSMs to te used in the ATM network that was being launched in Germany as part of a new European payment scheme based on credit and debit cards. The mayor issues were those of key distribution and key management. For these purposes I prepared adequate scripts and performed detailed validation of all possible configurations

Much later on, I carried out consultancy activities at Swisscom, in Bern (Switzerland) for 2 years (1998-2000). My area was support for emerging java card applications and payment of SIM services with credit cards After completing a set of projects related to this topic, I further worked in another project to implement mobile payments with vending machines. A prototype and a production environment was put in place, together with the ATOS software house.