Komercni Banka starts mass issuance of Maestro and Visa cards with Multi-application EMV cards from Gemplus

Luxemburg and Prague, 18. March 2004 - Gemplus S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and NASDAQ: GEMP), the world's leading provider of smart card enabled solutions, announces that Komercni banka, part of the Société Générale Group and one of the leading banks in the Czech republic, is issuing mass volumes of GEMPLUS EMV multiapplication cards. As one of the first banks in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), Komercni Banka is paving the way of issuing both EMV Maestro and VISA cards.

The project between Komercni Banka and Gemplus is an outcome of a two years cooperation in other smart card projects, such as Guaranteed Payment with major retail chains & channel authentication, whilst modelling and designing an EMV migration plan to reflect the long term business plans, market opportunities and customer expectations of Komercni banka.

Gemplus has provided smart cards, consulting services, a turnkey personalization solution (GemSense) and a set of applications ranging from Micro-Payments to Authentication and Loyalty.

From the beginning, the new cards support not only the EMV payment functions, but are also designed and issued as multifunctional cards to support different kinds of applications. Depending on the needs of specific customer groups of Komercni Banka, individual applications with customer-specific functions can be activated any time after the card is issued to the customer.

"Komercni Banka's innovative EMV program illustrates the bank's creative, forward-thinking approach to individual customer affinity and business partnerships. We are delighted to collaborate with Komercni banka on this long-term project and we look forward to helping Komercni banka bring the project to its conclusion in the near future with the delivery of Lifestyle Cards using Gemplus' multi-application card technology." says Zdenek Bubak, Area Sales & Marketing Director, EECIS.

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 2002: Gartner-Dataquest, 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

Christian Heizmann 
Tel: +49 89 / 96116 - 535 
Fax: +49 89 / 96116 - 111 
E-Mail: Christian.Heizmann@gemplus.com 

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