Giesecke+Devrient

What they do

Giesecke+Devrient, usually shortened to G+D, is a security technology group headquartered in Munich. It works in three broad areas: currency, where it prints banknotes and builds the machines that count and check them; connectivity, where it supplies SIM cards, eSIM platforms and device security; and digital identity and payments, where it makes payment cards, passports and identity systems. In 2024 the group reported revenue of about 3.1 billion euros and roughly 14,400 employees, two thirds of them outside Germany.

Why it matters

Few companies sit so close to the plumbing of trust. G+D printed its first banknote, a ten thaler note for the Weimarische Bank, in 1854, two years after Hermann Giesecke and Alphonse Devrient founded the firm in Leipzig. It printed Deutsche Mark notes for the Bundesbank from 1958 and has printed euro notes since 1999. In mobile telephony its place in history is just as secure: in 1991 it delivered the first commercial SIM card to the Finnish GSM operator Radiolinja, now Elisa. The company reports activating its 100 millionth eSIM in 2023.

Products to know

• SIM and eSIM: physical SIM cards and remote provisioning platforms for operators and device makers. See the SIM card.
• Banknotes and currency systems: printing, security features and high-speed processing machines for central banks and cash centres.
• Payment cards and digital wallets: chip cards and token services for banks.
• Identity: passports, ID cards and border control systems, partly through Veridos, a joint venture with Bundesdruckerei in which G+D holds 60 per cent.

The German angle

G+D's story tracks modern German history unusually closely. It printed notes for the Reichsbank during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. After 1945 its Leipzig works were nationalised and printed East German currency, while the company was re-established in Munich in 1948 by Siegfried Otto, husband of a Devrient descendant. Its move into chip cards in the 1970s drew on a German invention: the smart card concept patented by Jürgen Dethloff and Helmut Gröttrup at the end of the 1960s. Today it is one of the few German technology groups whose products most of the world's adults have handled, usually without seeing the name.

Sources

• G+D: The SIM turns 30
• Wikipedia: Giesecke+Devrient