Infineon's contactless chips for MasterCard

MUNICH

FEBRUARY 15, 2007

Infineon Technologies AG announced that it would provide contactless chips
for select MasterCard Global payment schemes, which are being introduced 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, an Infineon statement said.

Infineon said that at least 400 million chip-based payment cards were issued
worldwide in 2006, 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 per cent over the next five years.

Dr Helmut Gassel, VP and GM of the Chip Card and Security ICs business unit
at Infineon Technologies, said, "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."