INSIDE Contactless has revealed that shipments of its award-winning MicroPass intelligent payment platform have passed the 200m unit mark, with production volume doubling in the 18 months since reaching 100m units in November 2008. MicroPass is available from all major bank card brand certified manufacturers in N. America and now powers more contactless bank cards than any other core technology available in the market.

“Our shipments of MicroPass platforms have surged since late 2009, with multiple issuers converting major portfolios to contactless cards powered by MicroPass,” says INSIDE executive vice president Charles Walton. “Contactless chip technology is inevitable for the payments industry, providing increased security for payment transactions and enabling Near Field Communication mobile phone payments.”

Walton says that the versatility of the MicroPass platform has enabled it to expand into new applications, new form factors and new markets, including the MicroPass 4003-S core prelam technology, which powers sticker products for contactless payments on mobile phones and other devices. Last year, INSIDE opened a new operational facility in Bangkok, Thailand to increase its production capacity to meet an anticipated demand of up to 500m MicroPass contactless payment microprocessors annually.

The MicroPass platform is designed to power open standard contactless and dual-interface bank card payments along with other value-added applications in all global regions. Based upon a RISC architecture and optimized to the requirements of contactless transactions, each of the MicroPass family of products is designed to meet the demands of issuer organizations in the bank card and mobile payments, transit, ID and access control markets.