Amsterdam, December 16, 2004–Axalto (Euronext: NL0000400653 AXL) Axalto and Intercede today announced their collaboration in the smart card and identity management market with a combined solution designed to enable businesses, government agencies and educational establishments to quickly and easily protect their PCs, networks, virtual private networks (VPNs), buildings and facilities.

Combining Axalto’s card and middleware expertise with Intercede’s smart card and identity management expertise, the new solution takes card and ID management to new levels. This partnership integrates Intercede’s MyID® smart card and identity management technology with Axalto’s Card Management Toolkit technology, smart cards and middleware. The combined offering provides unrivalled lifecycle management of smart cards, digital certificates, Open Platform applets and biometric credentials.

The combined offering enables organisations to immediately start issuing and using smart cards/USB devices for applications such as:–Multi-site, multi-application corporate ID badges–Physical door access controls to buildings and other facilities–Logical access control and authentication to PCs, networks and VPNs–Biometric identity verification

“I am delighted that Axalto, the leading provider of microprocessor cards is partnering with Intercede to create one of the best ID management solutions in the industry. This further demonstrates Intercede’s outstanding technology and confirms significant penetration in the identity management sector” said Richard Parris, Chairman and Chief Executive, Intercede Group plc. “The integration of MyID with Axalto’s cards, middleware and card management toolkit, provides global customers with a compelling and powerful world-class identity and access control solution that can be rapidly and cost effectively deployed.”

“This technology partnership with Intercede to deliver a strong identity management system will enable customers to deploy digital credentials and smart-card based security solutions in the most cost effective manner,” said Marvin Tansley, Vice President of Axalto’s Access group. “We are confident that the alliance with Intercede will make life much easier for our corporate badge customers.”

About Axalto

Axalto (Euronext: NL0000400653 AXL) is the world’s leading provider of microprocessor cards (Gartner Dataquest 2004) ? the key to digital networks ? and a major supplier of point-of-sale terminals. Its 4500 employees come from 70 nationalities and serve customers in more than 100 countries, with worldwide sales reaching 3 billion smart cards to date. The company has 25 years’ experience in smart card innovation and leads its industry in security technology and open systems.

Axalto continuously creates new generations of products for use in a variety of applications in the telecommunications, finance, retail, transport, entertainment, healthcare, personal identification, information technology and public sector markets. Microprocessor cards provide convenience, security and privacy to public and private services operators, their customers and end users.

For more info, please visit http://www.axalto.com.