Gemplus and PTi Develop Smart Card-Based Gift Certificate for North Carolina Mall

Business Wire, Oct 29, 1998

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--October 29, 1998--

PTi's SmartCity(R) Platform Used To Develop Gift

Certificate Application; Gemplus Provides Application

Development Support, 100,000 Smart Cards

Gemplus(R) and Product Technologies Inc. (PTi), an ICL company, today announced at Cartes`98 that they have teamed to support the development of a major smart card gift certificate system at the SouthPark Mall in Charlotte, N.C.

The gift certificate program at SouthPark Mall enables shoppers to buy a smart card-based gift certificate that can be encoded with $10, $20, $50, or $100 in monetary value. With paper certificates, shoppers generally get cash back for the difference between the certificate's value and the transaction total. With a smart card gift certificate, however, the chip on the card keeps a running tab on the money that has been spent. Since the cards can only be used in participating SouthPark Mall stores, every gift certificate dollar gets spent in the mall.

The SouthPark system was developed using ICL's SmartCity, a turnkey smart card-based electronic purse application and multi-application development platform. SmartCity also manages the system's back office, including card issuing, transaction processing, settlement, and database management.

Gemplus provided application development support that included technical specifications and application mapping information for its disposable GPM271 smart card. It is also providing all card personalization services for the system.

Mellon Network Services was the project's system integrator and operates the SmartCity processing platform under contract to Atlanta-based Smart Card Retail Systems, Inc.

"We are most pleased to be supporting this ground-breaking system," said Donna Jeker, Gemplus vice president of strategic marketing and partnerships. "Smart card-based gift certificate applications is an excellent first step for any retail organization considering investing in smart card solutions. Down the road, electronic purse and loyalty applications can easily be added to the same card."

"This program is a significant industry milestone," said Bill Mangino, ICL vice president of international sales and marketing. "It uses our SmartCity platform to put in place an infrastructure that can be enhanced to include support for rechargeable smart cards and a loyalty application when the market is fully ready for multi-application solutions."

Smart Card-Based Retail Applications

Smart card-based gift certificates offer retail organizations several important advantages over paper gift certificates. A smart card-based gift certificate system obliges certificate holders to spend the entire value at the participating stores in the mall. Paper certificates take time to fill out and can be counterfeited. Smart cards, with their complex encryPTion schemes, are virtually tamper proof. They are also far more durable; they cannot be ripped, waterlogged or defaced.

About Gemplus

Gemplus (www.gemplus.com) is the world's leading provider of plastic and smart card-based solutions. Gemplus sells magnetic stripe cards, memory and microprocessor-based smart cards, smart contactless cards, electronic tags and smart objects. The company designs and markets software, development tools and readers. Gemplus also provides consulting, training and personalization services to deliver the industry's most comprehensive and flexible card-based solutions to its developers, distributors, partners, and customers.

With sales of over US$590 million in 1997, Gemplus employs more than 4,100 people in 10 manufacturing facilities, five R&D centers and 41 sales and marketing offices located in 27 countries around the world. Founded in 1988, Gemplus has successfully implemented portable and secure smart card-based solutions to simplify applications such as public and wireless communications, financial transactions, loyalty, transportation, education, healthcare, identity, physical access control, pay TV, electronic commerce, Internet security, logical access control and information technology.

About ICL and PTi

ICL is a leading supplier of IT systems and services. Operating in over 70 countries and employing over 19,000 people, the Group's revenue's for 1997 were 2,477.1 million pounds, generating a pre-tax profit of 30.0 million pounds. The company implements IT systems for major projects and provides innovative services to a range of industries covering amongst other, retail, finance, travel, telecoms and utilities together with education, local and central government sectors. ICL services include outsourcing, helpdesks, network services, inter/intranets, electronic commerce solutions, interactive kiosks, smart card systems, digital cities, and web sites. ICL plans to relist on the stock market in 2000. ICL's web site: www.icl.com.

PTi is a leading U.S.-based multi-application smart card solution provider, owned by ICL. PTi specializes in software for card management systems and the provision of end-to-end smart card solutions, including ICL's SmartCity. PTi is headquartered in Middletown, CT, with a branch office in Moscow, Russia. Further information on the company can be found at: http://www.prodtech.com.