Crédit Agricole Selects Gemalto for Large-Scale Deployment of Contactless EMV Payment in France

Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO), the world leader in digital security, announces it is behind Crédit Agricole’s large-scale deployment of contactless EMV banking cards in France. The Crédit Agricole group is market leader in full-service retail banking in France and one of the largest banks in Europe. Gemalto is the first to market the highly secure Optelio contactless EMV banking card certified by GIE-CB ("Groupement d’Intérêt Economique – Carte Bancaire”) with optimized EMV risk management features for the French market.

The deployment opens the door to the world of contactless payment for all of Crédit Agricole’s customers. Cardholders can enjoy a new payment experience by simply waving or tapping their card in front of a contactless reader at the point-of-sale for purchases under 20 euros, while transactions above that amount will require a PIN confirmation. The technology saves time for both merchants and cardholders and greatly reduces cash handling.

The card also features additional protections that reinforce security and complement the traditional EMV payment functionality. These added features provide improved flexibility while maintaining a high level of risk management for Crédit Agricole.

"Leveraging their global expertise in EMV and contactless rollouts worldwide, the Gemalto team put forward the right product at the right time for our program in France," according to Crédit Agricole.

"With this new project, Crédit Agricole is keen to offer their customers secure and reliable payment solutions, while benefiting from the latest technological innovations," added Gabrielle Bugat, Senior Vice President, Gemalto. "Contactless is one of the key cooperation and development areas for 2012, both for Gemalto and Crédit Agricole."

About Gemalto

Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) is the world leader in digital security with 2010 annual revenues of €1.9 billion and over 10,000 employees operating out of 87 offices and 13 Research & Development centers in 45 countries.

Gemalto is at the heart of our evolving digital society. Billions of people worldwide increasingly want the freedom to communicate, travel, shop, bank, entertain, and work—anytime, anywhere, in ways that are convenient, enjoyable and secure. Gemalto delivers on the growing demands for personal mobile services, identity protection, payment security, authenticated online services, cloud computing access, modern transportation, e-healthcare and e-government services. Gemalto does this by providing secure software, a wide range of secure personal devices, and managed services to wireless operators, banks, enterprises and government agencies.

Gemalto is the world leader for electronic passports and identity cards, two-factor authentication devices for online protection, smart credit/debit and contactless payment cards, as well as subscriber identification modules (SIM) and universal integrated circuit cards (UICC) in mobile phones. Also, in the emerging machine-to-machine applications Gemalto is a leading supplier of wireless modules and machine identification modules (MIM). To operate these solutions and remotely manage the software and confidential data contained in the secure devices Gemalto also provides server platforms, consulting, training, and managed services to help its customers achieve their goals.

As the use of Gemalto’s software and secure devices increases with the number of people interacting in the digital and wireless world, the Company is poised to thrive over the coming years.

For more information visit www.gemalto.com, www.justaskgemalto.com, blog.gemalto.com, or follow @gemalto on Twitter.