Amsterdam, February 7, 2012–Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO), the world leader in digital security, announces that Al Rajhi Bank, the largest financial institution in Saudi Arabia, has completed the main phase of the Dexxis Instant Issuance deployment program for on-the-spot EMV card delivery. With more than 500 branches equipped nationwide and over 15,000 cards issued daily, Al Rajhi Bank embarked on the largest rollout of any smart banking card instant issuance solution. Gemalto’s unique offer encompasses highly secure EMV DDA¹ payment cards, a complete, mission-critical issuance solution along with a full set of services: training, end-to-end project management, maintenance and support.

Al Rajhi Bank branches can now securely issue EMV cards to new and existing customers with just one click, from an Arabic-customized interface specially designed for ease-of-use. With card personalization made so swift and simple, Al Rajhi customers walk away with an activated, ready-to-use card in hand in just a few minutes. By deploying Gemalto’s solution, Al Rajhi Bank significantly improved on the logistical challenges associated with traditional courier-based delivery services and reduced its associated costs.

In order to ensure full service continuity, the solution can easily redirect card requests from one branch to another, and it also retains central issuance as a back-up system. The high level of reliability of the complete solution has already enabled Al Rajhi to issue half a million EMV chip cards on-the-spot to customers over the last six months.

“Gemalto was able to meet our needs for both the more sophisticated cards and the complete issuance services,” said Dr. Abdullah Al-Namlah, Retail General Manager, Al Rajhi Bank. “Al Rajhi has been delivering payment cards at the branch for years so when we determined to switch to EMV, we naturally selected the partner with the broadest experience in EMV instant issuance solutions globally.”

“Advanced banking solutions and services are key to our growth strategy”, added Philippe Cambriel, Executive Vice-President at Gemalto. “We are pleased with this successful deployment with Al Rahji Bank, which illustrates nicely the performance of our Instant Issuance solution, and demonstrates once again our expertise in EMV card systems and their successful deployment. It is rewarding for us to see that this nationwide program has visibly benefitted the bank and projected a first-class image to its customers.”

¹Dynamic Data Authentication (DDA), offers a dynamic security feature which helps to reduce fraud by detecting counterfeit and duplicate cards

View Dexxis Instant Issuance video: http://www.gemalto.com/financial/solutions/issuance_video.html

About Gemalto

Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) is the world leader in digital security with 2010 annual revenues of €1.9 billion and over 10,000 employees operating out of 87 offices and 13 Research & Development centers in 45 countries.

Gemalto is at the heart of our evolving digital society. Billions of people worldwide increasingly want the freedom to communicate, travel, shop, bank, entertain, and work–anytime, anywhere, in ways that are convenient, enjoyable and secure. Gemalto delivers on the growing demands for personal mobile services, identity protection, payment security, authenticated online services, cloud computing access, modern transportation, e-healthcare and e-government services. Gemalto does this by providing secure software, a wide range of secure personal devices, and managed services to wireless operators, banks, enterprises and government agencies.

Gemalto is the world leader for electronic passports and identity cards, two-factor authentication devices for online protection, smart credit/debit and contactless payment cards, as well as subscriber identification modules (SIM) and universal integrated circuit cards (UICC) in mobile phones. Also, in the emerging machine-to-machine applications Gemalto is a leading supplier of wireless modules and machine identification modules (MIM). To operate these solutions and remotely manage the software and confidential data contained in the secure devices Gemalto also provides server platforms, consulting, training, and managed services to help its customers achieve their goals.

As the use of Gemalto’s software and secure devices increases with the number of people interacting in the digital and wireless world, the Company is poised to thrive over the coming years.

For more information visit http://www.gemalto.com, http://www.justaskgemalto.com, http://blog.gemalto.com, or follow @gemalto on Twitter.

Gemalto Media Contacts

Peggy Edoire
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