Gemplus secures first e-passport roll-out in Singapore

Gemplus, NEC and SNP SPrint part of consortium involved in one of the world's first commercial deployments of e-passports

Luxembourg and Singapore, 6 April, 2005 - Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and NASDAQ: GEMP), the world's leading provider of smart card solutions, today announces that it will supply contactless chip technology and supporting systems to the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) of Singapore for use in their biometric passports. The consortium is led by NEC Solutions Asia Pacific.

Under the terms of the project, Gemplus' contactless chip technology, GemBorder¹ , will be embedded in Singapore's new biometric passport. The chip will contain biometric information about the passport holder such as fingerprint and facial details. The passport holder can be authenticated against the information on the chip at the checkpoints. In addition, Gemplus will provide the chip personalisation solution.

"With this deployment, Singapore is setting a global precedent, in which Gemplus plays an important role," commented Jacques Seneca, Executive Vice President Business Development Group and ID & Security Business Unit, Gemplus. "This win is a significant endorsement of our contactless technology for identity cards, e-passports and systems developed by our R & D team."

"This is a firm demonstration of our close collaboration with ICAO² . We are pleased to be involved in one of the first commercial deployments of an e-passport project worldwide," added Seneca.

The chip-based management of passports facilitates the authentication of the rightful owners to their travel documents. In addition, the advance standards framework for smart cards contributes to the objective of implementing a global and interoperable electronic passport infrastructure.

¹ GemBorder, a contactless chip technology for passports from Gemplus, complies with The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) specifications by delivering a platform that enables secure and flexible management of passport holder details on the chip, such as name, address, nationality, passport number etc., as well as a set of biometric data for strong authentication features. The contactless chip, which can be inserted as an inlay or sticker inside the passport or used within a standard ID1 smart card, acts as a miniature computer that requires an OS to activate and govern multiple tasks and applications. The GemBorder platform uses Gemplus technology to manage all contactless identification functions associated with electronic passports.

² The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations which sets standards for travel documents.

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 patents 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.

www.gemplus.com 

For more information

Janet LOH
Gemplus Technologies Asia
Tel: +65 6317 3333
Fax: +65 6873 7971
Email: janet.loh-tk@gemplus.com

Sangita Jeyapathy
Edelman
Tel: +65 9694 2148
Fax: +65 6733 5550
Email: sangita.jeyapathy@edelman.com

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