Gemplus and Groupe Caisse d’Epargne roll out France’s first translucent payment cards in volume
 

Stylish limited edition cards set to attract new customers for leading French bank

Luxembourg, 7 October 2005  –  Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 – GEM and NASDAQ: GEMP), the world’s leading provider of smart card solutions, today announces that it has delivered limited edition GemLucence™ cards to the French bank, Groupe Caisse d’Epargne. The volume roll-out of the translucent payments cards, which began in September 2005, is a first for the French market as well as for Gemplus.

In a bid to attract new customers to Groupe Caisse d’Epargne, the GemLucence card, with its mandarin tinted transparent card body, has been specifically designed to appeal to the youth market (from 16 to 25 year-olds). In addition, to promote exclusivity, availability has been restricted to 100,000 units.

“At Groupe Caisse d’Epargne we are currently enriching our image in a bid to appeal to new modern markets and as a result, we were keen to find a young, innovative product that would differentiate us from the competition and enable us to gain market share,” explained Andrée Bertrand, Director Payment Systems, Caisse Nationale des Caisses d'Epargne. “Gemplus has a customer-orientated business philosophy, can be trusted to deliver quickly and with the widest transparent colour range in the market, the company has a flair for innovation and stylish product design.”

“We are delighted that Groupe Caisse d’Epargne has chosen Gemplus for this project, where a technical innovation matches perfectly with marketing innovation.. Experience has shown us that our new card designs have helped retail banks attract new customers and reduce churn,” comments Philippe David, Vice-President Business Development Financial Services at Gemplus. “As a result, Gemplus has been focusing on card graphics and design and now has the ability to deliver card bodies that attract many different types of customers. Gemplus offers an assortment of stylish, cards that now come in a variety of striking forms and shapes, with contemporary and interesting shapes, full face holographic imagery, as well as an environmentally friendly range.”

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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 (2004), Frost & Sullivan, Datamonitor). It has sold over 5 billion smart cards.

With security at its core, and 2400 patents and patent applications produced by its innovative R&D team, Gemplus delivers a wide range of portable, personalized solutions in areas including Identity, Mobile Telecommunications, Public Telephony, Banking, Retail, Transport, Healthcare, WLAN, Pay-TV, e-government, and access control.

Gemplus' revenue in 2004 was 865 million Euros.
wwww.gemplus.com

About Groupe Caisse d’Epargne
http://www.groupe.caisse-epargne.com

For more information

Jane Strachey
Gemplus PR
Tel: +33 (0) 4 42 36 46 61
Fax: +32 (0) 4 42 36 50 97
Email: jane.strachey@gemplus.com

Johann Alexander
Edelman PR
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7344 1253
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7344 1541
Email: johann.alexander@edelman.com

©2005 Gemplus. All rights reserved. Gemplus, 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.