ahead
Inside Contactless has gained another major financial backer, Nokia
Growth Partners, which has just successfully led the smart card
microprocessor developer’s series C investment round in which €25
million ($38 million) was raised. Nokia Growth Partners, the
private equity and venture capital management unit of mobile device
manufacturer Nokia, joins Visa International and seven major global
private equity and venture capital firms that have already invested
in Inside.
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Investor enthusiasm for Inside is understandable given the French
company’s decade-long history of being at the cutting edge in its
area of specialisation – near field communication (NFC) contactless
payments. Some 55 patents have been granted to Inside. A partner at
Nokia Growth Partners described Inside’s applications of NFC chip
technology as “unparalleled”.
Success is reflected in Inside’s claimed position as the world’s
leading supplier of contactless bankcard applications, a position
it consolidated this year when in November worldwide deliveries of
its MicroPass contactless microprocessors passed the 35 million
mark. MicroPass deliveries stood at a total of 20 million at the
end of May 2007 and are projected by Inside to grow at between 40
percent and 60 percent annually over the next three years.
According to Inside, MicroPass has a market share of over 70
percent in the US and has been adopted by 25 US and Canadian card
issuers as well as by card industry players in Asia, Latin America
and Europe. The company says MicroPass achieves a transaction time
of 150 milliseconds, making it the world’s fastest contactless
microprocessor for bankcard applications.
Inside’s technology is also finding strong acceptance in the market
for mobile devices equipped with NFC contactless payment
capabilities. One of the most significant wins for Inside in this
market came in September this year when it was selected as the
preferred supplier of NFC contactless microprocessors by Chinese
mobile phone service supplier China Mobile Chongqing, which is to
launch what Inside termed “the first large-scale commercial mobile
payment deployment in the world”.
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By GlobalDataIn addition to success in China, Inside was chosen this year as the
supplier of contactless microprocessors for use in a number of
pilot programmes. These include one in France involving six major
banks and four mobile phone operators, and another in Korea by
Korea’s second-largest mobile phone service provider, Korea Telecom
Freetel.
