Issue of Equity and Granting of Options

ADVANCED SMARTCARD TECHNOLOGIES

Employee Share Options Granted and
Exercise of Options

Advanced Smartcard Technologies plc, (SMRT) the Scottish based software group specialising in smartcard technology,
announces that on 28 March 2006, the Company granted options over 9,799,992 New Ordinary Shares under the Company's EMI
Share Option Scheme. The objective of this scheme is to motivate and retain staff and to align their objectives with
those of shareholders.

Included within this figure are options over 1,166,666 New Ordinary Shares for each of the Company's three executive
directors: David Braddock, Barry Hochfield and Stephen Naylor.  The options have an exercise price of 3.7p per share and
can be exercised at any point between 19 April 2009 and 18 April 2016.

The Company can also announce that an application has been made to admit to trading on AIM, 2,873,936 Ordinary Shares
resulting from the exercise on 28 March 2006 of employee share options at 0.6472p per Ordinary Share.  Included in this
figure are 927,076 new shares issued to David Braddock and 1,545,127 issued to Stephen Naylor.  Following the issue of
these new shares, David Braddock will hold 14.50% and Stephen Naylor 14.76% of the enlarged Ordinary Share Capital of
the Company.

-ends-


Date: 30 March 2006
For further information contact:

Advanced Smartcard Technologies plc     01355 268521
David Braddock, Managing Director
Stephen Naylor, Finance Director

SVS Securities  020 7638 5600
Ian Callaway
Peter Manfield

cityPROFILE     020 7448 3244
Simon Courtenay

ARM Corporate Finance   020 7512 0191
Nick Harriss