Card Technology articles from April 2005

Card Technology archives from April 2005

A Backwater No More.(smart cards)
April 1, 2005... Despite its vibrant economy, North America has traditionally lagged behind in smart card technology. With the region's largest smart card and security show, CardTech/SecurTech, on tap this month, it seems like a good time to see whether that's...

Vendors Show Progress In e-Passport Test.
April 1, 2005... Vendors of electronic passport readers and chips have made substantial progress in the interoperability and speed of their products, according to results of a major e-passport test in Japan last month. Unofficial results of the three-day...

Contactless Alliance Formed.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Two companies have agreed to work together to offer contactless prepaid payment and loyalty products that North American consumers will be able to wave past radio frequency-enabled readers. Toronto-based Dexit Inc. brings its low-value, prepaid...

People on the Move.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Brian Moore has been named head of merchant strategy and partnerships at MasterCard Europe. Moore had been senior vice president and general manager of the UK and Ireland...Payment terminal manufacturer Hypercom Corp.'s Chief Financial and...

Japan Appeals For More Time For Biometric Passport.
April 1, 2005... Japan's top passport official is appealing to U.S. lawmakers to extend the deadline requiring countries whose citizens do not require a visa to travel to the United States to have an electronic-passport program in place or lose their...

Terminal Vendors Report Deals.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... France-based Ingenico says it has sold 100,000 terminals so far this year in Turkey, more than it shipped to that country in all of 2004. Card transaction volume in Turkey increased by 36% last year to 1.1 billion transactions, and the terminal...

MasterCard And Visa Harmonize Contactless Technology.(Visa International, MasterCard International Inc.)
April 1, 2005... MasterCard International and Visa International announced they will use a common communications protocol for contactless payment cards and other devices that consumers wave or tap on readers. That should help issuers and merchants save...

Tests of Contactless Payment To Hit The Street In Taiwan.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Banks plan to give contactless payment cards a tryout in Taiwan. In the first project, Chinatrust Commercial Bank plans to test the Visa Wave contactless smart card with 25,000 credit cardholders and 150 merchants. The pilot is scheduled to run...

Calendar.(Calendar)
April 1, 2005... May 18-19: The Electronic Passport Forum Organized by Wise Media For more information, contact Wise Media at: Telephone: +39 02 6719 9756 Fax: +39 02 6749 3322 E-mail: epassportwisemedia.it Web site:...

U.S. Officials Reach Agreement On A Smart Card Standard.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... The controversy over a proposed smart card ID specification for federal employees and contractors appears to be over. At the Federal Smart Card Manager's meeting last month in Washington agency officials working on the ID card project who had...

Japan Embraces Postpaid Transit.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Only in a country like Japan, where just about everyone owns a bank account, could transit operators even think about rolling out a 100% postpaid fare-collection system. That is what operators in the Kansai region, Japan's second largest...

Biometrics In Demand For ATM Cards In Japan.(automated teller machines)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Following the launch of the first biometrics-based cash card in Japan last fall, other major banks plan to check biometric data on cardholders before they are allowed to make withdrawals at automated teller machines, says one of the major...

Fast Food Chains Have A Taste For Contactless.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Millions of U.S. consumers will be introduced to tap-and-go payment products like MasterCard PayPass in the next year, says Paul Beverly of smart card vendor Axalto. He says, based on bids being sought by issuers, there will be at least 5...

Airline Launches.(Japan Air Lines Company Ltd. launches mobile e-ticketing scheme)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Japan Airlines in February joined its rival All Nippon Airways in offering a mobile e-ticketing scheme on i-mode FeliCa, the contactless mobile wallet from Japan's largest wireless telco, NTT DoCoMo. JAL customers can buy their tickets over the...

Can Octopus Extend Its Reach?(Octopus Cards Ltd.)
April 1, 2005... There is a lot of talk these days from the likes of Visa, MasterCard and American Express about adding contactless chips and antennas to payment cards, so consumers can pay with a wave past a reader or a gentle tap. The idea is that this will...

Designer Octopus.(Octopus cards)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Octopus cards come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, and they are not just cards anymore either. Even if you want a plastic card, a variety of colors, patterns, and designs are available - such as fireworks over a panoramic Hong...

SIM Plants: How Secure? Momentum Builds For Certification Scheme.(subscriber identity module)
April 1, 2005... Picture this: A rogue employee at a plant manufacturing subscriber identity module cards for mobile phones steals computer files containing confidential subscriber information used to personalize the cards. He churns out his own SIMs and sells...

Crunch Time Approaches For Standards Makers.
April 1, 2005... Smart card vendors say they are determined to push through changes to standards this year that would give the subscriber identity module card a high-speed protocol and interface. The only thing up in the air is which protocol and interface...

Increasing SIM Speed: The Technology Options.
April 1, 2005... (part 1 of 2) MMC PROS * High speed, expandable * Royalty-free * Protocol has broad support in high-end handsets MMC CONS * At least 3 electrical contacts on SIM chip needed, more for higher speeds * Little...

Looking For The Second Billion Subs.(Global System for Mobile Communications security identity module card users)
April 1, 2005... With introduction this year of handsets costing less than $40 apiece, GSM operators and their trade group, the GSM Association, hope to reach their second billion customers by 2006. That means a lot more low-cost SIM cards, and many of them...

In Brief.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... The smart card industry's top two semiconductor suppliers plan to provide a common software layer for their 32-bit chips, hoping to boost demand for the high-end microcontrollers. The vendors, Germany-based Infineon Technologies and Renesas...

Registered Traveler Projects Prepare For Takeoff.
April 1, 2005... Bill Connors is used to seeing his face look back at him whenever he flies out of Terminal B at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. As one of the 10,000 Americans enrolled in the Registered Traveler pilot program, Connors, executive...

What Was That Number Again?
April 1, 2005... When James Crosbie handed over his credit card to pay for a business dinner at an exclusive Edinburgh restaurant on Valentine's Day, the waitress asked him to tap in his personal identification number on her handheld payment terminal. Crosbie...

One Cardholder's Lament.
April 1, 2005... Last year, card fraud in the UK rocketed, partly because the banks were sending huge numbers of chip-and-PIN cards to their customers, and some of these cards were stolen while in the mail. My wife and I were victims of what APACS refers to...

How Good Is Your Memory?
April 1, 2005... Men Women Good 39.2% 42.2% Average 39.2 37.1 Poor 13.6 12.9 Brilliant 5.6 4.3 Appalling 2.4 3.5 Survey of UK consumers conducted by Visa in Dec. 2004....

In Brief: Belgium To Launch m-Payment Scheme.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Belgium's payment card processor Banksys, along with some of the country's banks and at least one telco operator, plan to launch a test at the end of this year of a mobile payment scheme targeting merchants that don't accept cards. A rollout is...

Contactless Mobile Payment: Wave of the future.
April 1, 2005... Tokyo -- Quick Read Allowing consumers to pay at stores, restaurants, vending machines and transit gates with their mobile phones has been the stuff of hype going back years-with few transactions to back it up. But with banks and merchants...

Dispatches From the I-Mode FeliCa 'Revolution':.
April 1, 2005... Tokyo -- They say the buzz is back on mobile commerce, only this time with a big difference. Instead of buying everything from refrigerators on down over the mobile network, as the industry soothsayers would have had us believe back in the...

Advertising Index.
April 1, 2005... Advanced Card Systems 7 www.acs.com.hk Banksys 11 www.banksys.com Boewe CardTec 13 www.boewe-cardtec.de CardCom Technology Inc. 27 www.cardcom.com Cartes ...

Contact Our Advertising Sales Representatives.(Brief Article)(Directory)
April 1, 2005... UNITED STATES AND CANADA Jim Baker phone 312 983 6179 fax 312 913 1334 EUROPE & ASIA Bernard Pingree Jean-Charles Abeille phone + 33 (01) 46 43 00 66 fax + 33 (01) 46 43 01 34 bernard.pingreeinfopac.fr icabeilleinfopac.fr ...

Headed in the Wrong Direction?(smart card frauds)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... An unexpected result Smart cards are supposed to reduce fraud. But card fraud went up last year in the United Kingdom, as issuers mailed out tens of millions of new chip cards that require entry of a personal identification number....