Gemplus Chosen by Commonwealth Bank of Australia for First MasterCard PayPass Pilot

Luxemburg (ots/PRNewswire) -

- CBA Cardholders to use the MasterCard-Approved Product,
GemInstant

Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and
NASDAQ: GEMP), a world leading provider of secure card-based
solutions, announces its involvement in Australia's first MasterCard
PayPass pilot program, where Commonwealth Bank of Australia's (CBA)
cardholders will simply place their card in front of the terminal to
make a payment.

The six-month trial will be rolled out in New South Wales, with
the first phase involving 33,000 CBA cardholders who will be able to
use their MasterCard PayPass cards at more than 150 participating
merchants. Shops include fast food restaurants and convenience stores
for payments under A$35. Cardholders will not need to enter a PIN or
sign a receipt, resulting in faster transaction times and therefore
reducing queuing time for customers at the store and improving the
service.

When the card is placed before the reader, the reader beeps to let
the cardholder know that the card has been read and payment has been
made. The security remains as high as for a traditional credit card.

Gemplus provided the GemInstant cards for this project. GemInstant
is a range of contactless payment solutions already tried and tested
in other parts of the world. "We knew that Gemplus's expertise in
contactless technology goes back over 10 years and it has real
international coverage when it comes to contactless payment" said Mr
Scott Henricks, General Manager, Consumer Financing & Relationship
Marketing, Retail Banking Services Commonwealth Bank.

Gemplus has been present in the Australian market for many years,
which was reinforced in 2000 by setting up a local joint venture, LM
Gemplus Pty Ltd. Since then, the company has established successful
long term relationships with its clients and continues to invest in
local technical support and solutions tailored for the Australian
environment. This local presence was a factor in their selection by
CBA for this project.

"Contactless payment is becoming an international trend and
innovative banks such as CBA want to be the first to provide their
customers with this convenient way to pay" commented Philippe David,
Vice President, Business Development, Financial Services, Gemplus.
"We are showing once again our commitment to innovative projects by
being involved in Australia's first MasterCard PayPass pilot after
successful implementations in America, Europe and Asia".

- A$35 is equivalent to US$25.

About Gemplus

Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and
NASDAQ: GEMP) is a world leading player in the secure card industry
in both revenue and total shipments (source: Gartner-Dataquest 2005,
Frost & Sullivan, Datamonitor). It has sold billions of smart cards
and other secure cards.

Gemplus delivers a wide range of portable, personalized solutions
in areas including Identity, Mobile Telecommunications, Public
Telephony, Banking, Retail, Transport, Healthcare, WiFi, Pay-TV,
e-government, and access control.

Gemplus' revenue in 2005 was 939 million Euros.

www.gemplus.com

For more information:

Marta Bordonada Victoria Aitken
Gemplus Edelman PR Agency
Tel: +33-(0)-4-4236-4179 Tel: +44-(0)20-7344-1258
e-mail: marta.bordonada@gemplus.com Email: victoria.aitken@edelman.com

(c)2006 Gemplus. All rights reserved. Gemplus, the Gemplus logo,
are trademarks and service marks of Gemplus S.A. and are registered
in certain countries. All other trademarks and service marks, whether
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respective owners.

Some of the statements contained in this release constitute
forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events
or our future financial performance and involve known and unknown
risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our or our
industry's actual results, levels of activity, performance or
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implied by such forward-looking statements. Actual events or results
may differ materially. Although we believe that the expectations
reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot
guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or
achievements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those estimated by the forward-looking statements
contained in this release include, but are not limited to: trends in
wireless communication and mobile commerce markets; our ability to
develop new technology, and the effects of competing technologies
developed and expected intense competition generally in our main
markets; profitability of our expansion strategy; challenges to or
loss of our intellectual property rights; our ability to establish
and maintain strategic relationships in our major businesses; our
ability to develop and take advantage of new software and services;
and the effect of future acquisitions and investments on our share
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responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of such
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in this release speak only as of this release. We are under no duty
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ots Originaltext: Gemplus
Im Internet recherchierbar: http://www.presseportal.de

Contact:
Marta Bordonada, Gemplus, Tel: +33-(0)-4-4236-4179, e-mail:
marta.bordonada@gemplus.com, Victoria Aitken, Edelman PR Agency, Tel:
+44-(0)20-7344-1258, Email: victoria.aitken@edelman.com