Card Technology articles from October 2004

Card Technology archives from October 2004

The Best Of 2004.
October 1, 2004... The year's not over yet, but it's time to think about celebrating the industry's outstanding achievements of 2004. Card Technology magazine is sponsoring its second annual Breakthrough Awards, which will be presented in April 2005 at the CTST...

White House Order Boosts Smart Cards.
October 1, 2004... With several U.S. government agencies issuing smart card IDs to their employees, there has been increased focus in the past year on making sure those cards can serve as identity documents throughout the government. That effort culminated in...

Tap-And-Go Going Strong In The U.S.
October 1, 2004... Smart cards making headway in the U.S. government is no longer a surprise. But U.S. banks moving toward chip cards in a major way-that would be news. In fact, sources say at least two major smart card projects are in the works, both...

New Orga CEO Plans Aggressive Expansion.
October 1, 2004... Germany-based smart card supplier Orga Kartensysteme has again made a change at the top, replacing both its CEO and board chairman. Taking the reins as new chief executive is Oliver Jaster, 34, son of Orga's principal owner and scion of a...

Regional News.(Traf-Park Inc. )
October 1, 2004... Europe OLYMPICS TEST NEW EUROPEAN HEALTH CARD: Besides hosting the Olympic Games, Athens and Saloniki, Greece, served as test sites this summer for a new health card system aimed at providing Europeans with easier access to care...

How To Make Life Hard On Card Counterfeiters: Card manufacturers have developed an array of techniques for deterring fraud. An industry executive provides an overview of the available technologies.
October 1, 2004... From the moment information was first stored on a plastic card, companies have sought ways to thwart counterfeiters or thieves who would misuse those cards. Smart cards may ultimately provide stronger security, but the cost of moving to chip...

India's Passage To Smart Cards.
October 1, 2004... Sure, India is fast modernizing, with a burgeoning middle class and galloping economy. But let's not get carried away. Most of the country is still rural and mired in poverty. Government corruption is rife, and to say the infrastructure...

India Issues SIM Cards Fast And Cheap.
October 1, 2004... India was already perhaps the lowest-priced market for mobile network service in the world when No. 1 operator Reliance Infocomm again slashed tariffs, to 1 rupee (US$.02) per minute for post-paid customers in early September. ...

ARPU Plunges As Subs Soar: Mobile subscribers and average revenue per user for Indian mobile network operators.(Brief Article)(Illustration)
October 1, 2004... Subscribers ARPU* Year** (millions) (US$) 1999-00 1.9 30.27 2000-01 3.6 23.90 2001-02 6.5 18.14 2002-03 13.0 13.35 2003-04 33.7 ...

Bidding Down The Price 32-kilobyte SIM cards for $1 apiece?(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... That's what Indian GSM operator BSNL is paying in its latest 15-million card order. But they'll be hard to find elsewhere at that price. In fact, if card vendors had it to do over they probably wouldn't have offered the cut-rate price....

A Bargain Bazaar For SIMs.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... April 2004 vendor bids on 32K SIM cards for BSNL Vendor Price* Axalto $1.00 Syscom $1.19 ITI (Incard) $1.24 Giesecke & Devrient $1.25 Oberthur ...

New Standards For Storing Picture E-Mail.
October 1, 2004... Standards makers recently adopted a new method for storing picture e-mails and other big files on SIM cards, but held off passing a related proposal to set up a faster protocol for downloading data from handsets to SIMs. Members of the...

Sagem Joins SIMAlliance.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... France-based Sagem has joined the SIMAlliance industry group as part of its strategy to break into the ranks of the top five vendors of smart cards worldwide. The association, which includes these five largest vendors, along with a few...

Malaysia Boasts First 256K SIM.
October 1, 2004... A little more than year after the first SIM cards packing 128 kilobytes of electrically erasable programmable read-only memory hit the streets, some vendors and at least one mobile network operator are starting to introduce the next...

India's Daunting National ID Challenge.
October 1, 2004... In what would become the second-largest smart card project in the world, Indian government officials say they are intent on issuing chip-based ID cards to at least 600 million citizens and legal residents across the vast country. They hope to...

ID Focus Briefs.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Germany-based Omnikey announced a deal to supply USB smart card readers to Multidata of Denmark, a supplier of payroll services. The smart card system was developed by Omnikey and partners, Danish e-payment specialist PBS and smart card...

Thailand Tries Again To Roll Out National ID.
October 1, 2004... The Thai government plans to start rolling out its chip-based national ID card this fall, although it has yet to finalize a contract with vendors, sources say. The project has been beset by delays in rollout schedules and complaints from...

UK Merchants Combat Superstores With Chip Cards.
October 1, 2004... Fifty years ago, a typical small British town center would have been a bustling place, full of independent merchants. Nowadays, Brits drive to out-of-town superstores in their SUVs. One British town is trying to fight back, with the aid of...

Bringing E-Payment To India.
October 1, 2004... Mobile payment schemes have so far failed to take off anywhere they've been tried. Then again, they haven't been tried in India. India is hardly a natural choice for launching m-payment, given that the country plays host to so few...

Payment Briefs.(eAuthentication age)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... U.S.-based Activcard Corp. has introduced eAuthentication EMV, designed to make online banking and shopping more secure. When a cardholder inserts an EMV card into the pocket-sized ActivReader Solo terminal and enters a PIN, the reader...

The Marriage Of Passports And Smart Cards.
October 1, 2004... Hastily arranged though it may be, this union's offspring could include millions of national ID cards and driver's licenses with chips and biometrics, as well as a new generation of electronic passports. It has the feel of a shotgun...

Memory Requirements.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... One compressed image takes up: Face 12K to 20K Fingerprint 10K Iris 30K Source: ICAO Copyright 2004 Thomson Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thomsonmedia.com...

How An ICAO-Compliant Passport Works.(the analysis)
October 1, 2004... You hold a new passport, complete with ICAO-approved chip and data. What happens when you hand it to a border guard? For starters, the guard will note the logo on the front of the passport book (see image below) that indicates that the...

Electronic Passports Around The World.
October 1, 2004... Jurisdiction/Comments Australia Expected to award contract for 64K passport last month. Only biometric will be digital photo. Minimum chip memory: 60K. Plans pilot with 6,000 passports by end of year. Belgium Issued first...