Innova Card, semiconductor fabless company designing and supplying secure solutions for smart card terminals, Closes a Financing Round of EUR 1.6 million

La Ciotat, France, March 29, 2004 – Innova Card, semiconductor fabless company designing and supplying secure solutions for smart card terminals, today announced a round of financing in the amount of €1.6 million. Shareholders are private investors from the semiconductor and smart card industries. And several public agencies like ANVAR (French Agency for Innovation) participate to this financing as well.

Based on its secure component USIP® (Universal Secure Integrated Platform), Innova Card offers modular hardware and software solutions to terminal manufacturers in order to develop new product ranges while reducing significantly their cost prices. The security, the performance and the painless integration of the chip USIP® are advantages of paramount importance to speed up the development and launching of new smart card terminals on a financial market today migrating to the international EMV standard. Moreover, the urgent need for securing electronic transactions on Internet or other networks in applications such as the healthcare or the identity with smart cards, opens up very promising market opportunities to answer to the demand of professionals and individuals.

This capital increase will help Innova Card launch its solution USIP® Professional built around the most secure and most integrated chip for EMV payment terminals. The chip will be available on the market by the third quarter of 2004.

Founded in June 2002 by four former engineers of ST Microelectronics and Gemplus, Innova Card is based out of La Ciotat, France, and has 16 employees. Web site: www.innova-card.com