Belgians Will Use Their Smart Cards For Internet Security.(Brief Article)

In most of the world, payment cards do not carry a chip, and issuers may be leery of Internet- authentication schemes that require consumers to have smart cards. But a smart card may catch on more quickly as a Web ID in Europe, where nearly 100 million consumers carry electronic purse smart cards and where Visa and Europay effectively have mandated a switch to chip-based credit and debit cards by 2005.

Banksys, which coordinates debit card and automated teller machine traffic in Belgium, is leading the way. The Brussels-based company introduced this fall an Internet-authentication service based on the Proton e-purse that Banksys developed and that now resides on 7.5 …