http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050117/nym042_1.html?printer=1 Yahoo! Finance Search - Finance Home - Yahoo! - Help Financial News Enter symbol(s) Symbol Lookup Press Release Source: Texas Instruments Texas Instruments to Deliver RFID Solution for MasterCard PayPass Monday January 17, 10:00 am ET DALLAS, Jan. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Instruments today announced plans to deliver ISO/IEC 14443 compliant radio frequency identification (RFID) chips designed to meet the stringent security requirements for MasterCard International's PayPass(TM) line of RFID payment cards and tokens. TI expects to submit this product for MasterCard certification in the second quarter of 2005. Full production is planned to start in the second half of this year TI's new 13.56 MHz RFID chip is the latest to be introduced in a series of solutions based on the company's ISO/IEC 14443 technology platform. This proven platform features products with universally accepted and standardized cryptography, using National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) approved crypto algorithms, including Triple DES and SHA-1. The ISO/IEC 14443 standard allows for this increased level of security because it supports significantly faster rates of data exchange (up to 848 kbits per second), enabling more complex security information to be passed between an RFID card and reader without affecting the user's experience. As an added feature, read ranges for products based on the ISO/IEC 14443 platform are also limited to 4 centimeters (roughly 1.5 inches), further increasing the security of the transaction. As credit and bank card issuers expand pilots throughout the United States and into other countries, the opportunity for TI to serve this market with its secure ISO/IEC 14443 solutions is significant. The December 2004 Nilson Report indicates that payment card manufacturers shipped 4.38 billion units to card issuers (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB, and ATM cards) and retailers (both credit and pre-paid cards) in 2003. In the first half of 2004, MasterCard's customer financial institutions worldwide had issued more than 627.5 million MasterCard-branded cards, a 6.6% increase over the same period in 2003, according to an August 2004 MasterCard press release. "The financial services industry recognizes that ISO/IEC 14443-based RFID solutions provide the stringent levels of security required for conducting payment transactions," said Shawn Rogers, director, wireless commerce and Tag- it(TM) products, Texas Instruments RFid Systems. "With our heritage in pioneering technologies in new markets, we're working with leading bank card issuers and credit card companies to bring these highly reliable and secure RFID solutions to this market." About Texas Instruments Texas Instruments is the world's largest integrated manufacturer of radio frequency identification (RFID) transponders and reader systems. Capitalizing on its competencies in high-volume semiconductor manufacturing and microelectronics packaging, TI is a visionary leader and at the forefront of establishing new markets and international standards for RFID applications. For more information, contact TI-RFid Systems at 1-888-937-6536 (North America) or +1 972-575-4364 (International), or visit the Web site at http://www.ti-rfid.com. Texas Instruments Incorporated provides innovative DSP and analog technologies to meet our customers' real world signal processing requirements. In addition to Semiconductor, the company's businesses include Sensors & Controls, and Educational & Productivity Solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and has manufacturing, design or sales operations in more than 25 countries. Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.ti.com. Source: Texas Instruments -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'