Tampere, Finland – February 17, 2009 – Confidex, a fast growing company with unique expertise in RFID design, manufacturing and engineering, today announced that the latest member of its C1G2 UHF hard tag family, SteelBIT, has been developed based on the Steelwave Micro™ tag to be compliant with Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) RFID tagging requirements.

In January 2009, FSTC, a consortium of leading North American-based financial institutions, technology vendors, independent research organizations, and government agencies, concluded its RFID IT Data Center Asset Tracking project. According to FSTC, the consortium’s goal is to bring forward, test, prove, and validate the next generation of critical financial services technologies and how they can be applied industry wide. The RFID project outlined a set of requirements which will enable more efficient tracking and handling of IT assets in the data centers. Requirements include a detailed pre-encoding scheme, human and machine readability specifications, as well as, a list of tag performance requirements.

“Confidex has been an integral member of the FSTC RFID IT Data Center Asset Tracking Project team,” said John Fricke, FSTC Vice President and Chief of Staff. “The Confidex SteelBIT has demonstrated performance that meets the RFID Tag requirements as defined by the project.”

Starting in February 2009, Confidex SteelBIT will be available based on the RFID tagging requirements of IT assets in the financial industry. Confidex will offer SteelBIT as pre-encoded according to the FSTC encoding scheme and will supply the tag with the specific layout, which consists of the printed 2D data matrix and number series showing the tag IC data. Customer logos can also be included if needed. In addition, the SteelBIT tag meets FSTC’s RFID tag range performance requirements (3 ft. reading range for handheld readers and 6 ft reading range for fixed readers).

“The FSTC, having defined Data Center Asset tracking requirements, facilitates efficient RFID implementation by identifying and standardizing key functional and numbering requirements,” said Torbjörn Andersson, Confidex Vice President Worldwide Sales, Business Development & Market Communications. “Confidex was honored to participate in the FSTC RFID Project and is pleased to offer the SteelBIT as an FSTC-compliant RFID tag.”

Since its inception, Confidex Steelwave Micro™ , featuring excellent performance (9.8ft / 3m), small footprint (1.5" x 0.5"/38mm x 13mm), IP67 protection class, and suitability for both on-metal and non-metal applications, has proven its efficiency and reliability in both IT asset management and other valuable asset tracking applications. And now, Confidex SteelBIT leads the way as an FSTC-compliant RFID tag.

The cost-efficient Confidex SteelBIT tag with its superior characteristics and high quality construction will now enable the financial industry to easily implement a passive UHF RFID tracking solution for IT assets, which has been widely recognized within the industry as critically important.

In addition to IT asset management within the financial community, Confidex SteelBIT is ideal for any valuable asset tracking application and can be customized based on customer-specific encoding and printing requirements.

Confidex SteelBIT, now FSTC-compliant, joins the growing family of unique Confidex RFID tags that have been successfully used in a variety of demanding applications such as identification of IT assets, vehicles, rail cars, and reusable transit items, in motion, from arctic to subtropical regions. Confidex, offering unique, customized RFID tracking solutions.

For more information on the FSTC RFID tagging requirements, visit http://www.fstc.org/projects/index.php?id=29