France-based contactless chip supplier Inside Contactless announced today it had surpassed the 200-million mark for shipments of its MicroPass contactless payment chip, which is mainly used in U.S. banking cards.
Inside said the cumulative shipment figure represents a doubling in only 18 months since it topped the 100-million chip mark in November 2008. That is despite a weak market for most of 2009 for the main destination of its chips: contactless credit and debit cards issued by U.S. banks. Banks had cut back following the U.S. financial crisis. UPDATE: That caused Inside's contactless chip shipments to slip to 60 million for 2009, compared with 83 million in 2008, NFC Times has learned. The chip supplier shipped 24 million chips in 2007. (See table below).
Inside executive vice president and chief marketing officer Charles Walton told NFC Times that shipments surged in late 2009 and early 2010 across the board, as banks started replenishing supplies.
