Sligos SA, France’s second largest software and services company, has put all its activities relating to the manufacture of Smart Cards into its Solaic subsidiary. Charged previously only with card fabrication, Solaic now customises the cards with a software mask that contains all the information necessary for the card to perform the desired function, and engineers systems that use the cards. The three spheres of activity combined brought Solaic 1992 revenues equivalent to $58m – $41m from card manufacture, $15.5m from customisation services, and $1.5m from systems engineering. Francis Lavelle, managing director of Solaic, said the company expects to do $70m all told this year, of which $58m should come from card manufacture, $9.6m from customisation services, and $2.5m from systems engineering. Lavelle explained the projected drop in services revenues, saying 1992 was major year for reissuing banking cards in France, a process that occurs every two years. This year, Solaic will renew the cards it distributed in 1991, which were fewer than in 1990, he said. Solaic also announced three new contracts with public telecommunications operators in Sweden – Televerket, Portugal, TLP, and Holland, Koninklijke PTT Telecom Nederalnd NV. Televerket and TLP ordered 1m and 500,000 pre-paid phone cards respectively under the contracts, while PTT Telecom contracted Solaic to establish a phone card payment system in Holland. Solaic estimates that the European market will get through 320m of the embedded microprocessor Smart Cards in 1995 for a variety of applications.
