Infineon to Provide Contactless Chips for Select MasterCard Global Payment Schemes

Munich, Germany – February 9, 2007 – Infineon Technologies AG (FSE/NYSE: IFX) today announced it has been providing contactless chips for one of the world’s largest contactless payment programs initiated by MasterCard Worldwide.  Infineon supplies its highly-secure contactless smartcard microcontrollers to many of the MasterCard PayPass deployments in 13 countries worldwide, including Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia and the US.  Designed to make payment transactions more convenient than actual cash, magnetic-stripe cards or conventional chip-based cards, the future debit and credit cards will contain a chip featuring a contactless interface and state-of-the-art cryptographic capabilities.

 

Currently, there are more than two billion debit, credit and other payment cards in circulation worldwide.  In 2006, at least 400 million chip-based payment cards were expected to be issued on a worldwide basis with MasterCard and Visa programs alone accounting for about 17 million contactless chip cards.  According to market research company Frost & Sullivan, the conventional contactless payment smart card market is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 63 percent over the next five years.

 

“Serving as a preferred partner for many of today’s major contactless payment systems demonstrates Infineon’s strong commitment to providing best-in-class semiconductor products, helping to institute new payment applications and driving next-generation contactless schemes,” said Dr. Helmut Gassel, Vice President and General Manager of the Chip Card & Security ICs business unit at Infineon Technologies.  “Our combined expertise in security and contactless technology enables us to be the volume supplier not only in payment, but also in other major contactless markets such as e-passport deployments in the US and other countries or public transport projects such as “T-Money” in Korea.”

 

The market leader in secure chip card ICs

 

Infineon has been the market leader in chips for card applications for eight consecutive years.  Infineon develops, manufactures and markets chips for so called “smart card” applications, such as identification for people and goods, payment, public transportation, entertainment, mobile communications and prepaid telecommunications.  According to market research firm Frost & Sullivan, in 2005 Infineon had a 31 percent share of the total market supplying around 1.08 billion chips.  In sales, Infineon’s share was 29 percent of the $1.9 billion market in 2005.

 

More information on Infineon’s chips for smartcard applications is available at www.infineon.com/security.

Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions addressing three central challenges to modern society including energy efficiency, mobility and security.  In fiscal year 2006 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 7.9 billion (including Qimonda sales of Euro 3.8 billion) with approximately 42,000 employees worldwide (including approximately 12,000 Qimonda employees).  With a global presence, Infineon operates through its subsidiaries in the US from Milpitas, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore, and in Japan from Tokyo.  Infineon is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com.