The News

CPI Card Group Adopts INSIDE's Next-Generation MicroPass L4-2G Contactless Platform

06/02/2007

MicroPass Intelligent Hardware Provides Greater Flexibility With Multi-Payment Brand and Multi-Application Support, While Also Enabling a Great Consumer Experience
 
LITTLETON, Colo., Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- CPI Card Group is proud to announce today that it is bringing into the financial card market a contactless payment card that can be used by multiple payment brands, to simplify issuer and operational logistics. Based upon the MicroPass(R) L4-2G chip developed by INSIDE Contactless, this implementation includes support for both the Visa MSD payment specification version 1.4.2 and the MasterCard PayPass magnetic stripe version 3.1 applications.

"This MicroPass technology enables CPI to offer our customers the convenience of using one chip for different payment brands thereby benefiting from a competitive and effective solution without jeopardizing quality or delivery time," states Bob Clarke, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "CPI, along with our partner INSIDE Contactless, is celebrating this success."
This new solution meets all specifications in terms of functional and security requirements. The payment application will be selected and activated during the pre-personalization process within the CPI Card Group facility.
"The latest generation of MicroPass features performance enhancements designed to deliver a successful cardholder experience every time, while also providing multi-brand and multi-application support designed to meet the requirements of bank card issuers," states Didier Serra, INSIDE Contactless' General Manager and Executive Vice President of Sales for North America. "We're thrilled that CPI has adopted our latest platform so rapidly."
A pioneer in the plastic card industry, CPI has supported the movement to contactless payments in the financial card market since its introduction. To date, CPI has delivered more than 12 million contactless cards to more financial institutions than any other competitor.

About CPI Card Group
CPI Card Group, Inc. is an award-winning manufacturer of plastic cards. Twenty years of experience in the industry and commitment to technology enables customers to tap into leading-edge programs of the highest quality. With the capacity to produce over one billion cards a year, capabilities include standard, contactless, foil, textured, scented and translucent card production. CPI offers a full catalog of card services including personalization, fulfillment and distribution. All facilities are outfitted with the latest in card technology and are ISO 9001:2000 certified.

About MicroPass(TM)
MicroPass is a family of intelligent hardware platforms designed to power open standard contactless and dual interface bank card payments 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 feature 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 US market with more than 12 million bank cards deployed which are MicroPass powered. INSIDE's MicroPass L4-2G is an enhanced, next-generation microprocessor-based contactless chip platform designed specifically to meet multi-payment brand and multi-application requirements within the US contactless payment market. With very low power requirements, MicroPass also remains the most suitable core platform for key fob and alternative form factor deployments.

About INSIDE Contactless:
Founded in 1995, INSIDE is headquartered in France and with global presence in China, Singapore, Poland and the USA. INSIDE is uniquely positioned as the only fabless semiconductor company solely dedicated to the advancement of contactless technology, leveraging one of the industry's largest intellectual property portfolios. Through strategic emphasis in Contactless Payments and Near Field Communications (NFC), INSIDE has been on a rapid growth track over the past two years with more than 12M chips delivered for contactless payment cards in the US market and a dominant position in driving NFC standardization and pilot deployments.