Contactless Payment Leader Joins American Public Transportation Association

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France, April 3, 2008–As transit agencies around the world move to modernize their automatic fare collection systems, INSIDE Contactless, a leading provider of advanced, open-standard contactless chip technologies, today announced it is bringing the power of its MicroPass® intelligent payment platform to the transit fare collection market and increasing activity in supporting the industry to migrate towards new open standards based on secure contactless payment solutions. As a move to increase commitment to this segment, INSIDE has joined the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), an international organization that is the leading force in advancing public transportation. INSIDE company representatives will be participating in APTA’s annual Fare Collection Workshop, the premier gathering of international professionals engaged in the design, procurement and operation of automatic fare collection systems being held in Boston this week.

“The APTA conference is the perfect opportunity for us to address transit agencies’ evolving payment system requirements as they adopt new technologies to improve efficiency, security and ease of use,” said Charles Walton, executive vice president of payments for INSIDE Contactless. “INSIDE’s MicroPass payment platform is ideally suited for next-generation transit fare payment systems as the industry embraces open, standards-based systems.”

Transit agencies in the U.S. and elsewhere around the globe are eyeing open standard contactless technologies as a way to create more cost-effective, interoperable, and secure transit fare collection systems. This, in turn, has encouraged transit agencies to evolve their closed, proprietary systems in favor of open systems, while pushing for cross-industry standards that will make it easier for them to support open bank card payment applications.

Contactless payment technology is evolving to become the standard for new transit fare collection systems because it meets customer requirements for quick entry and exit, ease of use and convenience. It also delivers many operational advantages, including lower maintenance costs, lower life-cycle fare media costs, increased patronage, reduced fare evasion, and increased financial float.

“In addition to more open, standards-based and transit-specific contactless payment systems, we envision a convergence of the transit payment and financial payment markets, and already several transit systems globally are accepting contactless credit cards directly as fare media,” said Walton. “As the leading provider of contactless payment card microprocessors for both MasterCard PayPass® and Visa payWave™ cards, we have proven the security, flexibility, and openness of our products and are now in a unique position to address the requirements of the transit fare collection system market.”

The MicroPass family of intelligent payment platforms 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 features low power consumption, fast transaction processing, and overall performance meeting the demands of issuer organizations in the bank card payments, transit, and access control markets. MicroPass is the platform of choice for card manufacturers and issuers in the U.S. market with more than 35 million MicroPass-powered bank cards deployed. With very low power requirements, MicroPass also remains the most suitable core platform for key fob and alternative form factor deployments.

About APTA

APTA is a nonprofit international association of more than 1,500 member organizations including public transportation systems; planning, design, construction and finance firms; product and service providers; academic institutions; and state associations and departments of transportation. APTA members serve the public interest by providing safe, efficient and economical public transportation services and products. APTA members serve more than 90 percent of persons using public transportation in the United States and Canada.

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 number-one 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 25 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, Warsaw, San Francisco, Seoul, and Boston. For more information, please visit http://www.insidecontactless.com.

Contact INSIDE Contactless

Géraldine Saunière-Miallet
+33 4 45 39 33 01
gmiallet@insidefr.com

Contacts presse–AxiCom

Elise Koenig
AxiCom AxiCom
+33 1 41 06 18 07
elise@axicom-france.com

Jean-Marie Amoros
+33 1 41 06 18 05
jeanmarie@axicom-france.com