Gemplus Wins Major Tender to Provide Smart Card Technology and Services to Mexican Government
6 September 1999
Gemplus Wins Major Tender to Provide Smart Card Technology and Services to Mexican Government
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.--Sept. 2, 1999--Will Operate Mexico's National Vehicle Registration Systems
Gemplus(R), the world's leading provider of smart card-based solutions, as part of a consortium with Talsud and Mexican entrepreneur Henry Davis, today announced it has won a call for tender to operate the Mexican national vehicle registration system.
The new consortium, yet to be named, will provide smart cards, smart card readers and maintain a database for vehicles registered in Mexico in a ten year contract with projected revenues estimated at $90 million per year.
Chosen from a field of 22 competitors and offering the most competitive price, the consortium was the only one to propose smart card technology.
By leveraging its collective knowledge and experience within the marketplace, its outstanding technical capabilities and proven successes of consortium members in the smart card industry, the consortium will provide a secure, effective and high-quality solution to meet the demanding needs of the Mexican government.
The consortium's smart card solution represents a major technological advance for the region.
By employing a smart card solution to identify vehicles, the Mexican government will not only have a secure method by which to continuously update its database -- which provides accurate information on each vehicle, such as former owners -- but will significantly increase its success rate in collecting on tax payments and fine revenues.
Each smart card will store information about each vehicle, such as serial number, year of production and manufacturer. An estimate of over 15 million Gemplus GemClub cards will be issued to vehicle operators, starting in early 2000 and the consortium plans to have all vehicles registered and identified in the database by the end of that year.
"By choosing GemClub(TM) cards, the Mexican government has a tremendous amount of flexibility and will be able to add additional applications to the registration program in the future in order to meet its evolving needs," said Bertrand Moussel, vice president-marketing and sales, in Latin America for Gemplus. "We look forward to working with Talsud and Henry Davis to make this consortium a success."
"Talsud has already proven its ability to manage a program of this magnitude through our work with the smart card-based drivers license and vehicle identification programs in Argentina and El Salvador," said Victor Taiariol, President of Talsud, "Talsud and Gemplus have a long-standing, successful relationship and we again look forward to working with them to provide this technology to the Mexican government."
"By leveraging the smart card technology development and integration experience of Talsud and Gemplus, we have a perfect combination for success," said Henry Davis, general manager of the new consortium.
About Gemplus
With sales of over $648 million in 1998, Gemplus employs more than 4,300 people in ten manufacturing facilities, five R&D centers and 41 sales and marketing offices located in 27 countries around the world.
Founded in 1988, Gemplus has successfully implemented portable and secure smart card-based solutions to simplify applications such as public and wireless communications, financial transactions, loyalty, transportation, education, healthcare, identity, physical access control, pay TV, electronic commerce, Internet security, logical access control, and information technology.
Note to Editors: Gemplus is a registered trademark of Gemplus. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.