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Australia-based electronic-payments vendor Keycorp Ltd. is selling its smart card unit, including its interest in the Multos operating system, for AU$25.3 million (US$21.8 million or 14.8 million euros) to an unidentified international card supplier. The deal, which Keycorp disclosed in a filing to the Australian Securities Exchange this week, comes less than four months after Keycorp announced it would buy the patents and other operational assets of the Multos multiapplication smart card system for US$3 million. Some banks and government agencies, mainly in Asia, use the highly secure Multos technology, once owned by MasterCard Worldwide, for their chip-based banking and identification cards and electronic passports. Keycorp, which expects to close the deal by the second week of September, declined to name the buyer until then. In the running likely are such global smart card companies Gemalto NV and Oberthur Technologies SA, both of France, and Giesecke & Devrient of Germany. Giesecke declined comment, and immediate comment was unavailable from the other companies. Gemalto and Oberthur are among the nearly 20 members of the Maosco Consortium, which maintains and develops specifications for the Multos. Australia-based newsletter The Sheet suggests U.S.-based semiconductor supplier Texas Instruments also may be interested. That company announced several months ago it was licensing Multos for chips it plans to sell for e-passports and smart cards. On Thursday, a spokesperson for Texas Instruments said only that the company "does not comment on speculation." A source tells CardLine Global sister publication Cards&Payments the new buyer plans to keep the Maosco Consortium in place to direct maintenance and changes to the Multos technology. MasterCard spun off Multos and its Maosco unit in late 2005. MasterCard kept a stake in the technology and was joined by equity firm Oak Hill Venture Partners, Keycorp and Japan-based semiconductor vendor Hitachi in forming a holding company, StepNexus, to handle ownership of Multos and other smart card technology. According to StepNexus, organizations, mainly banks, have issued about 100 million Multos cards to date.
