Oberthur Technologies, one of the world’s leaders in secure technologies, announces today the acquisition of 23.5% of the Taiwanese company GOTrust Technology Inc. The transaction is expected to be closed by year end.

GO-Trust is a leading company in microSD hardware based security solutions, with a solid track record of sales success in Asia and a strong industrial and equity partnership with KINGMAX Semiconductor Inc, a global leading manufacturer of microSD and other memory devices.

With the democratisation of connected devices such as smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, and portable multimedia players and rise of sensitive data flows, privacy breaches become a day-to-day reality and financial losses due to cybercrime are a worrying fact. Security turns out to be a key issue for potential service providers – like banks, mobile operators, payTV operators – but also public administrations and private companies wanting to share data, applications and services with their clients, citizens and employees.

Oberthur Technologies’ Secure microSD offers a complete security mechanism for connected devices, while keeping all the functionalities and memory space of a standard microSD. It combines GO-Trust innovative microSD hardware and device middleware with Oberthur Technologies range of secure elements and security solutions. This pioneering offer is turning mobile and electronic applications into reliable and secured services as users will be able, for instance, to securely authenticate themselves, perform banking transactions, digitally sign documents and confirm legally binding transactions, prove their identity when joining social networks or gaming sites, enjoy governmental services and safely access enterprise applications.

“Oberthur Technologies is regarding removable hardware-based security devices as a key enabler of the secure deployment of mobile and internet services. Our investment in GO-Trust demonstrates our belief in the strong capability of microSD to secure tomorrow’s world’, said Thomas Savare, General Manager of Oberthur Technologies..

“With our combined technology innovations and Oberthur Technologies’ worldwide customer relationships we anticipate a significant increase in the deployment of mobile security devices. With fast track access to Oberthur Technologies’ portfolio of Java secure products we will be able to create more stunning mobile solutions in the microSD form factor, even faster.” added Darren Lee, GO-Trust CEO.