Strong Growth Continues for Contactless Payment Card Deployments

Aix-En-Provence, France, May 11, 2010–Reaffirming its position as the dominant supplier of contactless payment platforms globally, INSIDE Contactless, a leading provider of advanced, open-standard contactless chip technologies, today announced that shipments of its award-winning MicroPass® intelligent payment platform have surpassed the 200 million unit mark, with production volume doubling in the 18 months since reaching 100 million units in November 2008. Since its introduction at CARTES 2005 in Paris, the MicroPass platform has become regarded as the gold standard for contactless payments, and has made steady gains in new applications, in new form factors and new markets as the use of contactless technology becomes more widespread. MicroPass is available from all major bank card brand certified manufacturers in North America and now powers more contactless bank cards than any other core technology available in the market.

“Our shipments of MicroPass platforms have surged since late 2009, with multiple issuers converting major portfolios to contactless cards powered by MicroPass,” said Charles Walton, executive vice president for INSIDE Contactless. “Contactless chip technology is inevitable for the payments industry, providing increased security for payment transactions and enabling Near Field Communication mobile phone payments.”

According to Walton, the versatility of INSIDE’s MicroPass platform has enabled it to expand into new applications, new form factors and new markets. This includes the MicroPass 4003-S core prelam technology, which powers sticker products for contactless payments on mobile phones and other devices, the EMV-compliant MicroPass 6000 dual-interface platform, the MicroPass 5100 platform for lightweight ICAO ID cards and documents and MicroPass 4001 and 5001 for transit, access control and other markets. The rapid deployment growth of MicroPass from zero to 200Mu shipped in less than 5 years is unprecedented in the contactless market, and attributable to the low power, flexible core architecture, extensive application suite, and strong card manufacturing partner community that has developed around MicroPass.

Last year, INSIDE opened a new operational facility in Bangkok, Thailand to increase its production capacity to meet an anticipated demand of up to 500 million MicroPass contactless payment microprocessors annually.

Consumers enjoy added convenience, speed and ease of use afforded by contactless payments, while issuers and merchants enjoy faster transaction times, increased spending per transaction, lower operational costs and penetration into the cash payment market.

The MicroPass intelligent payment platform is designed to power open standard contactless and dual-interface bank card payments along with other value-added applications in all global regions. Based upon a RISC architecture and optimized to the demanding requirements of contactless transactions, each of the MicroPass family of products is designed to meet the demands of issuer organizations in the bank card and mobile payments, transit, ID and access control markets.

About INSIDE Contactless

INSIDE Contactless leads the market in open-standard contactless innovation. The company has delivered more than 400 million contactless platforms worldwide, and its contactless payment and Near Field Communication (NFC) solutions power the next generation of payment, transit, identity and access control applications. INSIDE’s work in contactless standards and its 69 families of patents, including essential NFC patents, play a leading role in establishing industry direction. INSIDE is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France, with offices in Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Warsaw, Seoul, and San Francisco. For more information, please visit http://www.insidecontactless.com.

Contacts

For INSIDE Contactless

Patrick Corman
Corman Communications, LLC
(650) 326-9648
patrick@cormancom.com
http://www.cormancom.com

INSIDE company contact

Geraldine Sauniere
Marcom Director
+33 (0) 4 42 39 33 01
gsauniere@insidefr.com