A Major Step Towards a Global Interoperable Mobile Payments System

AIX EN PROVENCE, France, January 28, 2008 – Over the next few months, 12 mobile operators will run trials of contactless mobile payment services in Australia, France, Ireland, Korea, Malaysia, Norway, The Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey and the U.S. as a precursor to commercial launches. The MicroRead® NFC chip from INSIDE Contactless, a leading provider of advanced, open standard contactless chip technologies, will power the critical contactless payment transactions in most of the handsets to be used in the trials under the Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative.

The trials form part of the GSM Association’s Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative, which is designed to provide a single global approach to enabling contactless payments using a mobile phone. Consumers will be able to use their handsets to quickly, easily and securely pay for goods and services in shops, restaurants and train stations. 35 mobile operators representing 1.3 billion customers are participating in the initiative.

The technology implemented by INSIDE will allow the mobile operators to quickly deploy SIM-based applications, thanks to a direct link between the NFC chip and the SIM card via the standard SWP protocol.

“This is the result of several years of early investments from INSIDE Contactless, where we were able to anticipate the standards and produce the first NFC chip with a SWP interface,” said Philippe Martineau, executive vice president, NFC Business Line.

One of the characteristics of INSIDE’s MicroRead technology is the capacity to behave as a router in the phone rather than just a simple modem, establishing secure connections between different devices, and giving phone manufacturers flexibility to address various market applications and regions.

INSIDE’s MicroRead NFC chip can communicate with existing contactless payment systems to deliver a wide range of secure, interoperable and transparent services such as credit and debit payments.

Both consumers and merchants see significant benefits from using the mobile phone as a payment form factor at the point of sale, according to research carried out by Serrula on behalf of the GSMA. Two-thirds of the 2,574 consumers in 17 countries surveyed said that they expect to begin using their mobile phone to pay at the point of sale within two years of the service becoming available. Moreover, 50 percent of the 240 merchants from 10 countries surveyed see promotional opportunities in using the mobile phone as a payment device.

About MicroRead

MicroRead® is an innovative, next-generation RF chip that uses Near Field Communication (NFC) for proximity data transactions. When incorporated into cell phones, PDAs or PCs, MicroRead chips enable them to operate both like RF readers and contactless smart cards or RFID tags. MicroRead products are fully compliant with NFC’s specifications and include all options of NFC. MicroRead products are self-powered and incorporate a battery-off mode that enables transactions to occur even when the handset is turned off.

About INSIDE Contactless

As the only fabless semiconductor company focused exclusively on contactless chip platforms, INSIDE Contactless is a market leader in Near Field Communication (NFC), contactless payments and access control. Innovation in contactless technology has led to more than 55 patents granted to INSIDE, including several essential NFC technology patents. INSIDE is the #1 market share provider of contactless bank card applications in the world, with more than 35 million MicroPass intelligent payment platforms delivered from launch in 2005 through 2007. These MicroPass platforms power cards from more than 20 leading bank card issuers. More than 25 key partners around the world, including major card manufacturers and handset providers, have successfully delivered “powered by INSIDE” contactless products such as payment and access cards, point-of-sale terminals, NFC-enabled mobile handsets and other products. INSIDE Contactless is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France, with offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Poland, San Francisco and Boston. For more information, please visit http://www.insidecontactless.com.

For additional information

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