1999-03-04 , ESC-9956
Business News From Philips Semiconductors

At the Advanced Card Awards 1999, Philips Semiconductors won the award for Best New Chip for their MIFARE^® PRO dual interface smart card IC. The event took place within the scope of the recent Smart Card Exhibition '99 in London, UK. The judges recognised that Philips Semiconductors had overcome compatibility issues and produced a chip that combines both contact and contactless interfaces with the same memory fully controlled by a microcontroller. Awards were only given to those products that are already in production and with MIFARE^® PRO being the first ever dual interface smart card IC to begin volume production, Philips Semiconductors has proven its innovative leadership in the smart card arena.

In accordance with the major banking institutes' application standards, MIFARE^® PRO ensures high security and convenience for service providers. This has been achieved by the use of an embedded high-speed triple-DES co-processor, highly secure design methodology and the RF interface technology, which conforms to ISO 14443 A. Thus MIFARE^® PRO is the ideal dual interface solution for banks, transport operators and other service providers to jointly offer their services on one card. Public transport operators and other service providers can securely load their application onto a bank card, removing the need or expense of issuing their own card, while ensuring the high speeds required in contactless transactions. Being fully compatible with existing MIFARE^® infrastructure - covering an estimated 90% of all contactless schemes worldwide - MIFARE^® PRO eliminates the additional adaptation costs that are necessary with other types of dual interface cards.

Continuing Philips Semiconductors' success at The Advanced Card Awards were the MIFARE^® based schemes nominated for the best transport or travel application - further supporting MIFARE^® as the industry standard for contactless smart cards. System integrator Transmo won the award for their Hertfordshire Citycard Scheme in conjunction with Hertfordshire County Council, UK. The two other nominees were Germany's Amatech GmbH's RFID technology for transport applications, and the joint electronic ticketing capability watches launched in Finland by Swatch and Schlumberger.

Alexander Harrer, product line manager chip card ICs, at Philips Semiconductors commented, "Philips Semiconductors' MIFARE^® PRO offers the first single-chip solution that can run state-of-the-art security both via the contact and the contactless interface. With more than 2.5 billion MIFARE^® transactions carried out over the last four years, MIFARE® PRO is based on a proven and trusted contactless interface technology."

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the eighth largest semiconductor supplier in the world (according to Dataquest's preliminary 1998 ranking by sales). Philips Semiconductors is a leader with a proven reputation in the development and production of cryptocontroller and contactless smart card ICs as well as in components for radio frequency identification. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by regional application labs. Additional information on Philips Semiconductors can be obtained by accessing its home page at http://www.semiconductors.philips.com

MIFARE^® is a registered trademark of Royal Philips Electronics N.V.