A smart card, a type of chip card, is a plastic card embedded with a computer chip that stores and transacts
data between users. This data is associated with either value or information or both and is stored and processed
within the card’s chip, either a memory or microprocessor. The card data is transacted via a reader that is part of a
computing system. Smart card-enhanced systems are in use today throughout several key applications, including
healthcare, banking, entertainment and transportation. To various degrees, all applications can benefit from the
added features and security that smart cards provide. According to Eurosmart, worldwide smart card shipments
will grow 10% in 2010 to 5.455 billion cards. Markets that have been traditionally served by other machine readable
card technologies such as bar-code and magnetic stripe are converting as the calculated return on investment is
revisited by the each card issuer year after year.
First introduced in Europe nearly three decades ago, smart cards debuted as a stored value tool for pay phones to
reduce theft. As smart cards and other chip-based cards advanced, people found new ways to use them, including
charge cards for credit purchases and for record keeping in place of paper.
In the U.S., consumers have been using chip cards for everything from visiting libraries to buying groceries to
attending movies, firmly integrating them into our everyday lives. Several U.S. states have chip card programs
in progress for government applications ranging from the Department of Motor Vehicles to Electronic Benefit
Transfer (EBT). Many industries have implemented the power of smart cards into their products such as GSM digital
cellular phones to TV-satellite decoders.
