MicroPass 5100 “ICAO Lite” Products Compete for Best Identification Solution

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France, Oct. 15th, 2009–INSIDE Contactless, the world leader in advanced open-standard contactless chip technologies, today announced its MicroPass® 5100 product family has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious SESAMES Innovation award in the identification category. With faster read times and lighter weight memory options than standard ICAO solutions, INSIDE’s MicroPass 5100 “ICAO-Lite” offerings deliver a flexible, cost-effective solution for creating driver licenses, voting cards, residence permits, electronic benefits transfer documents and other paper-based eID documents that meet ICAO standards, but with less stringent data storage requirements.

“We are proud to have been chosen as a finalist by the jury members from among the 309 applications competing this year for the prestigious SESAMES Awards, and congratulate the other finalists for their achievements,” said Bertrand Moussel, executive vice president, INSIDE Contactless. “INSIDE was the leader in recognizing the significance of the market for a lightweight alternative to standard ICAO solutions, and the MicroPass 5100 family has already gained enthusiastic support from our customers.”

ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) has set standards for ePassports and eVisas based upon the use of contactless chip technology with large EEPROM memory requirements to store high-resolution biometric data and other identity information. But ePassports, eVisas and other heavyweight ICAO ID applications represent only about 10 percent of the overall identity market, leaving a huge, unserved potential market for INSIDE’s ICAO-Lite solutions. The MicroPass 5100 addresses the strong market demand for other ID cards and documents with less stringent storage requirements and for customers requiring lower cost solutions.

Based on an efficient, 16-bit RISC microprocessor powered by a native operating system, MicroPass 5100 products offers the same logical data structure, coding and signing schemes as a standard ICAO chip and compatibility with existing ICAO infrastructure and workflows, as well as fast performance, low power consumption and excellent read distance. The MicroPass 5100 family retains the ICAO-standard memory organization, coding and signing schemes, building upon proven, well-known personalization and reading flows, and also offers an optional Basic Access Control (BAC) application to secure documents from surreptitious RF scanning until the user intentionally allows it.

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 300 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.