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Smartcard briefs

China embracing smartcards

Zhao Bo, deputy director of the computer and information advancing department of the Ministry of Information Industry, told the opening session of the 7th International Fair of Smart Cards in Beijing, that in 2003 alone China consumed 334 million chip cards, including 123 million subscriber identity module (SIM) cards for mobile phones and 70 million prepaid chip cards for use in pay telephones. One initiative that Zhao said the government would put its weight behind is a proposal to develop a smartcard platform suited for multipurpose cards. He said the government would encourage the industry to invest in research and development for this purpose. Zhao also pointed to radio frequency identification (RFID) as a technology that China will attempt to develop. Such RFID technology, in which chips communicate via radio signals with readers, is being used for paying transit fares in dozens of Chinese cities. The Chinese national ID document will be a contactless card, as well. Zhao said China aims to develop applications this year for what he called 'e-tags' and to turn them into commercial products.

Big Mac goes smart

The ez-link contactless transit smartcard, introduced in April 2002 for use through Singapore's public transport system, boasts 5,9 million cards in circulation. It has the highest wallet penetration of any payment or non-payment related cards in Singapore. The card has been expanding beyond transit into other retail payment arenas such as cinemas, photo developing kiosks and a number of schools. Now, McDonald's locations across the island will accept the ez-link card in what will be the card's first use in restaurant environments.

Smartcards protect notebook PCs

Data security is a major concern for the growing number of users of mobile computing and as the first company to include smartcard security with its high-end notebooks and tablet PCs; Acer has taken the lead in addressing the problem. The smartcard stores over 100 times more information than typical magnetic strip cards and reduces tampering and counterfeiting through high-security mechanisms. The cards are also expensive to duplicate. "While smartcard technology is certainly not new, it is a solution that is set to revolutionise safe and secure mobile access through personal identification and encryption for Acer customers," says Gary de Menezes, commercial director of Acer. The smartcard is the size of a standard plastic 'credit card' with an embedded microchip. Users simply insert and remove the smartcard from the smartcard reader built into the notebook. When the card is removed, the notebook is locked. Without the smartcard the notebook will not boot and is useless to would-be thieves.

Smart watch

Combine a watch from Casio, a contactless chip from Sony and a suite of applications from JCB . . . and you get a payment and security token far cooler than your typical employee ID badge. Credit card giant JCB is testing the new wristwatch with a group of employees in Japan with plans to roll the product out commercially in 2005. The watch uses JCB's 'Offica' solution suite that includes touchless payment, access control and other employee-related administrative functions. Previous Offica 'tokens' include cards containing Sony's Felica contactless chips as well as cellphones containing the chips.

FRAM is coming

Contactless smartcards combined with fingerprint, facial and iris biometrics supported by artificial fingerprint devices may provide next-generation, multipurpose ID and access-control cards. Such cards will use ferroelectric random-access memory, iris scanning and TSRG cryptosystem to support law enforcement, border control and transportation security. Currently, electronically-erasable, programmable, read-only memory (EEPROM) is the primary memory device used to store data in smartcards. However, ferroelectric random-access memory (FRAM) is superior to EEPROM in many respects, including write speeds that are more than 10 000 times faster. In addition, FRAM has lower voltage writes than EEPROM and FLASH and consumes about 1/400th the power for writing data that EEPROM uses. In addition, its rewrite endurance is 100 000 times greater. FRAM-based CSC systems with 32 KB of memory, which will soon be on the market, could support all proposed ID applications.

China and SIM cards

China Mobile, the world's largest cellphone carrier and China Unicom the world's third largest carrier have ordered a combined 200 million SIM cards for delivery in Q1 and Q2 2004. Seemingly the 16k is no longer popular as 45% of the SIM requested are 32k and 5% were 64k.

Visa testing contact-less smartcards

Called Visa Wave and EMV compliant, the technology is currently being piloted in Malaysia. The card is a dual interface card. Only 150 merchants have been equipped with contactless readers, the others using the traditional contact readers. To allow for overseas use, the card has a magnetic stripe as well.

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