Biometric smartcards expected to hit mass markets this year and IDEX focussing business to capture major share

Oslo, Norway, 30 January 2018 - IDEX, a leading provider of advanced fingerprint solutions, continues to make strong progress in the buoyant market opportunity for biometric cards, and is re-shaping and focussing its business to ensure successful volume commercialisation.

Over the past few months, the market for smartcards with biometric sensors has reached a critical inflection point. Several of the leaders in the payments ecosystem have now communicated strong commitment to develop the market, and these events are driving significant interest in deploying biometric cards. Biometric Embedded News estimates a volume of almost 350 million biometric cards in 2020, indicating a potential value of the total biometric card market of around USD 4 billion.

Together with its partners, IDEX has taken a leading role in driving to the first commercial rollouts, having completed many of the world`s first live pilots of biometric payment cards in 2017. In addition, IDEX has a strong pipeline of industry-leading innovations recently announced, including an in-house matcher for cards which achieves single digit False Rejection Rate ("FRR") with very low power and processing requirements, a demonstrated contactless ready sensor solution and a ground-breaking patented self-enrol technique. As a result, the company is firmly on track to deliver volume rollouts in 2018 across a number of key markets.

"IDEX is now actively involved with many major end customers which we expect to turn into volume shipments this year. As examples, the real-life customer trials we have done with our partners for ABSA Bank, Pick`n`Pay the major South African retailer, and UniCredit Bulbank in Bulgaria have been exceptionally successful and have led to many more trials underway or committed in the banking and retail markets. We also have a multiple additional trial activities in Asia with key card integrators", says Dr Hemant Mardia, CEO of IDEX.

Given this huge opportunity and IDEX`s leading position in this market, management has been proactively re-shaping the business to drive success as the biometric card market turns to scale. These changes have involved a complete focus of resources onto biometric cards and an increased emphasis on bringing systems design and development skills in-house. In addition to assuring the business is volume ready, these changes will accelerate the company`s already world-leading smartcard roadmap whilst at the same time bringing the benefit of reducing the quarterly run rate spend through 2018 below USD 6.5 million.

These changes will ensure that the company is fully prepared to exploit the huge and transformative opportunity that the mass adoption of biometric smartcards cards will bring to a wide range of industries across the payments, financial inclusion and identity industries.

Contact
Charlotte Knudsen, Director of IR and Communications, +47 9756 1959, ck@idex.no
Henrik Knudtzon, CFO, +47 9302 2827, hk@idex.no
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/idexasa

About IDEX
IDEX is a leading developer of advanced off-chip fingerprint sensors and complete system solutions to a range of biometrically-enabled applications, including smart cards, Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile. The company`s technology is based on a fundamentally unique architecture that delivers form factor flexibility and superior cost-performance characteristics. IDEX`s total addressable market represents a fast-growing multi-billion unit opportunity.

IDEX ASA is traded on the Oslo stock exchange under the ticker IDEX.

For more information, please visit www.idex.no

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

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Source: IDEX ASA via GlobeNewswire
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