News
Maxim Integrated Products Acquires Innova Card
Maxim Integrated Products announces today that it has acquired Innova Card, the french fabless semiconductor company, founded in 2003 by Bruno Bernard (1) to invent and design the MIPS-bsed USIP concept (Universal Secure Integrated Platform) (see the photo).
This unique platform was designed to offer POS terminal manufacturers the opportunity to smoothly migrate to the EMV standard by developing high-performance, cost-competitive products that meet the needs of banks and merchants. The foundation of the concept was to supply secure solutions for trusted terminals by extending the smart card technology onto System on Chip (SoC) platforms.
So, this acquisition validates this approach was the right one. Recognized by the market (more than fifty for current projects, and a customer base now exceeding a hundred companies ), Innova card is now recognized by the industry.
Maxim Integrated Products which is a publicly traded company that designs, manufactures, and sold over $2 billion of various semiconductor products in its fiscal year 2008, augments its secure transaction product portfolio. Maxim already offers secure and 'ultra secure' microcontrollers (DS5000 8-bit microcontroller series) dedicated to the payment and security industry. These products were previously developed by Dallas Semiconductors, a company acquired by Maxim in 2001 for the same strategic purpose as that which explained today the acquisition of Innova card.
(1) Bruno Bernard is now CEO of NeoWave, a french company he founded in 2007 to design and commercialise new kind of smart secure devices.