Gemplus Wins 9 New Customers In Emerging EMV Markets

"Global presence, local service" approach results in strong performance for leading provider of smart card solutions

Luxembourg, July 12, 2004 - Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and NASDAQ: GEMP), the world's leading provider of smart card solutions, today announces nine new customer wins in emerging smart banking markets in Asia Pacific, South America, and Europe. This growth is testimony to Gemplus' improved market performance in a five year EMV drive, which has seen the company become the fastest growing provider of smart card-based technology solutions to the financial services industry. Gemplus now serves 22% of the total market (Source: Frost & Sullivan, 2004).

The new customers Gemplus has recently won are:

• Sociedade Interbancária de Serviços (SIBS), Portugal
• Maybank, Malaysia
• HSBC, Malaysia
• Akbank, Turkey
• Komercni Banka, Czech Republic
• Standard Chartered Bank, Malaysia
• Russian Standard Bank, Russia
• Vilniaus Bankas, Lithuania
• Santander Santiago, Chile

"We are committed to working very closely with our customers at every stage of EMV migration and beyond. We try to understand their key concerns, and we define with them the best migration strategy," comments Philippe Julien, Vice President Marketing at Gemplus Financial Services Business Unit. "In the last five years, Gemplus has delivered more than 120 million smart banking cards to more than 600 customers in over 80 countries. This is a clear endorsement of our 'global presence, local service' strategy, designed to deliver the right solution to the right customer at the right time."

"Gemplus recently earned the Frost & Sullivan Competitive Strategy Leadership Award in recognition of its substantial market share and influence in the financial and loyalty smart card market," says Anoop Ubhey, Senior Smart Card Industry Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. Mr Ubhey confirms: "Banks around the world are looking to Gemplus for the robust, cost-effective and secure smart card solutions for flexible EMV migration."

Gemplus' EMV smart card systems help build lasting, valuable customer relationships , and include applications like loyalty, online authentication, e-purse, and others. The company provides them to the world's leading financial institutions, including: HBOS (UK), to which approximately 15 million EMV cards will be delivered until 2006; JCB (Japan); Citibank (Malaysia); SMT (Tunisia), making Gemplus the sole supplier of EMV cards and personalisation services to that country; Banamex (Mexico) and Banco do Brasil (400,000 EMV smart cards based on Java Card technology).

With a global market share of 30% in 2003, Gemplus was recently confirmed by Gartner as the world's leading provider of smart card-based technology solutions for the sixth consecutive year.

About Gemplus

Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 -- GEM) and (Nasdaq:GEMP) is the world's leading player in the smart card industry in both revenue and total shipments (source: Gartner-Dataquest (2003); Frost & Sullivan, Datamonitor.) It has the largest R&D team, unrivalled experience and an outstanding track record of technological innovation.

Gemplus offers an exceptional range of portable, personalized solutions that bring security and convenience to people's lives. These include Mobile Telecommunications, Public Telephony, Banking, Retail, Transport, Identity, WLAN, Pay-TV, e-government, access control and a wealth of other applications.

Gemplus' revenue in 2003 was 749 million Euros.

www.gemplus.com

For more information

Steve Lacourt, 
Gemplus PR 
Tel: +32 495 29 20 26 
e-mail: steve.lacourt@gemplus.com

Vanessa Clarke
Edelman Public Relations
Tel: +44 20 7344 1349
e-mail: vanessa.clarke@edelman.com 

©2004 Gemplus. All rights reserved. Gemplus, and the Gemplus logo are trademarks and service marks of Gemplus S.A. and are registered in certain countries. All other trademarks and service marks, whether registered or not in specific countries, are the property of their respective owners.

Some of the statements contained in this release constitute forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our or our industry's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activities, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Actual events or results may differ materially. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those estimated by the forward-looking statements contained in this release include, but are not limited to: trends in wireless communication and mobile commerce markets; our ability to develop new technology, and the effects of competing technologies developed and expected intense competition generally in our main markets; profitability of our expansion strategy; challenges to or loss of our intellectual property rights; our ability to establish and maintain strategic relationships in our major businesses; our ability to develop and take advantage of new software and services; and the effect of future acquisitions and investments on our share price. Moreover, neither we nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this release speak only as of this release. We are under no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after this date to conform such statements to actual results or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated results.