Infineon ships chips for Taiwan's e-passport program

Infineon Technologies announced that it is supplying security chips to Taiwan's epassport program. Infineon is the only supplier and has started shipping security chips of the SLE78 product family based on its digital security technology. Taiwan has been issuing one million ePassports per year to its approximately 23 million citizens since 2008. The passports have a validity of 10 years and comply with latest International Civil Aviation Organization standards for travel documents.

This is the second major project driven by the government of Taiwan that relies on security chips from Infineon: more than 25 million pieces have already been shipped for the electronic health cards of the Taiwan Health Care Project.

ID cards, passports, health cards and driving licenses increasingly are being issued in the form of electronic documents, comprising a security chip, in order to protect them more effectively against counterfeiting and falsification while increasing convenience for the ID holder. The personal data is stored and processed by security chips integrated into the smart cards and electronic documents. Infineon supplies security chips for the electronic passports of the largest countries in the world including USA, Brazil, China and India. Furthermore, 90 per cent of all European national eID projects utilize Infineon's security chips, including Germany where Infineon also supplies the electronic health card project.