Gemalto history

Schlumberger began its chip card activities in February 1979 when it licensed and marketed certain chip card technologies developed and patented by Roland Moreno, who is generally credited with the invention of the chip card.

The Company received its first contract in June 1981 to provide GIE Cartes Bancaires, the French credit/debit card issuers’ association, with 5,000 microprocessor cards and 200 associated point-of-sale terminals.

Gemplus started its operations in 1988 as a supplier of prepaid phonecards and subsequently developed ties with the telecommunications industry similarly to Schlumberger.

Multos International originated as the smartcard division of Australian company Keycorp Limited, a pioneer in the area of secure, multi-application smartcard technologies, working in the field since 1993.

Before 1999, Gemplus conducted its business through a french limited partnership called Gemplus SCA but in 1999 it merged with Gemplus Associates and formed Gemplus SA, a joint stock company.

In December 2000, the company completed an initial public offering of its capital stock, in the form of ordinary shares traded on Euronext Paris, and American depository shares (ADSs) traded on the US NASDAQ exchange.

The company was founded on December 10, 2002 and is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.“

In 2003, Schlumberger created Axalto as a division to consolidate these into one company.

Axalto was an IPO spin-off of Schlumberger in 2004.

During this time, most of the subsidiaries of Gemplus SA were transferred to Gemplus International SA. In 2005, Gemplus acquired a Finland-based company for Setec Oy, and next year it merged with Axalto.

Gemalto was formed in 2006 as a result of a merger between two companies, Axalto and Gemplus.

In 2008, Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, acquired Keycorp’s smartcard business assets, to create Multos International.

By the end of 2012 SIMs had been installed in over 3 billion handsets; more than 5 billion SIMs were sold during the year.

In 2016, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia also partnered with Gemalto for the same.