MicroPass-Based PayID Card from U.S. Bank Wins Most Innovative Prepaid Program Award

Aix-En-Provence, France, January 28, 2010–INSIDE Contactless, a leading provider of advanced, open-standard contactless chip technologies, today announced its MicroPass® 4006 contactless platform is at the heart of U.S. Bank’s PayID Card, this year’s Paybefore Award winner for Most Innovative Prepaid Program. A unique bridge between the open standard payments ecosystem and the community of HID® iClass®-enabled systems deployed globally, the MicroPass 4006 is the only contactless solution available that makes it possible to combine ID and physical/logical access control applications with contactless payment capabilities.

“MicroPass 4006 is an ideal solution for combining identification, payments and secure access on a single card, and we congratulate U.S. Bank on winning this award and for their leadership and innovation in this market,” said Charles Walton, executive vice president of payments for INSIDE Contactless. “INSIDE developed the MicroPass 4006 specifically for use on university and corporate campuses, where students, staff and employees can conveniently use a single, all-purpose card for contactless payment, identification, access control and ticketing transactions.”

U.S. Bank is the first card issuer in the United States to use a single card for traditional magnetic stripe purchases, contactless payments transactions and to gain access to secure facilities. The MicroPass 4006 platform embedded in the cards contains both open standard contactless payment applications, which allows for contactless payment at the point of sale, and the HID iCLASS application, which allows for contactless access to secure facilities.

“U.S. Bank is thankful to INSIDE Contactless and our other partners on this program for their dedication and creative contributions to helping us achieve this unique, simplified solution for our cardholders,” said Dominic Venturo, chief innovation officer of Retail Payment Solutions for U.S. Bank. “Improving the overall customer experience is one of U.S. Bank’s primary concerns, and we will continue to innovate with new technologies and solutions to maintain our leadership.”

Since 2001 INSIDE has been the exclusive supplier of chips to HID for iCLASS credentials, establishing INSIDE as the number one global provider of 13.56-MHz contactless chips for physical access control. Because of its performance and flexibility, INSIDE’s contactless chip technology has become the industry’s leading contactless solution for access control applications, which require optimized data security and fast throughput.

The MicroPass 4006 platform has been built to the latest bank card industry standards and has also been certified through EMVco for compliance with the latest card brand security requirements. MicroPass 4006-based card products are available now from CPI Card Group.

About INSIDE Contactless

INSIDE Contactless is the global leader in open-standard contactless payment and near field communication (NFC) semiconductors and software that power the next generation of payment, transit, identity and access control applications. The company’s intelligent, microprocessor-based platforms offer the flexibility to be embedded in smart cards, mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices, documents, badges and other items to support a wide range of innovative contactless applications and bring new levels of convenience to users. INSIDE has delivered more than 350 million contactless platforms worldwide to customers and partners that include many of the leading payment card and mobile phone manufacturers, systems integrators and financial institutions. With a portfolio of 60 families of patents, including several essential NFC patents, the company has played a leading role in NFC and contactless innovation. INSIDE is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France, with offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Warsaw, Seoul and Silicon Valley. 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