By Andy Williams, Contributing Editor If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Hong Kong-based Octopus Cards Limited ought to be feeling pretty good about itself. Not only has it revolutionized transit payments at home-Hong Kong-but its arms are starting to spread to other parts of the world. In 2003, Octopus successfully exported its […]

Campus card banking partners step up to educate student cardholders Get a bunch of students, mostly freshmen, away from home for the first time. Stick them all in a dorm, many of them are armed checks, a credit card, a student ID, their driver license and Social Security card. It’s a recipe for ID theft. […]

By Jerry Banks and David Hanny, co-authors of RFID Applied RFID implementations are becoming very numerous as they offer an expected benefit over the present way of doing things. Used in the proper situation, RFID can provide a better way of doing business or enable a much more convenient procedure for the consumer or user […]

Issuing combined student IDs and bank cards on campus reduces the time it takes to get these multifunction cards into students’ hands, and it enables them to begin using the card the moment they exit the campus card office. But if that card was a branded Visa or MasterCard product, this hasn’t been possible for […]

By Jerry Banks and Les G. Thompson, co-authors of RFID Applied It is hard to label any component of an RFID system as being more critical than any of the others. In past articles we have discussed the RFID tag, as well as, the RFID antenna hardware. Both of these fundamental pieces are integral parts […]

Have off-campus programs become a virtual necessity for card programs? By Andy Williams Contributing Editor The decision to allow off-campus merchants, mainly restaurants and bookstores, to access students’ prepaid accounts used to be an easy one to answer: no way. But that attitude among colleges has been changing as more have found that on-campus income […]

Acquisition is part of ongoing effort to become a one-stop shop for identity needs By Jennifer Slattery, Contributing Editor The acquisition of Toronto-based Bioscrypt Inc. is the latest purchase for the Stamford, Conn.-based company, L-1 Identity Solutions. Over the years the company also acquired Viisage, Identix, Integrated Biometric Technology, SecuriMetrics, Iridian, SpecTal, ComnetiX, McClendon and […]

By Zack Martin, Editor President Bush is asking for $390.3 million to fund the US VISIT program for the 2009 fiscal year. Other biometric and identification programs, including Real ID and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, were also highlighted in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s budget-in-brief. But the overall budget is a mixed bag […]

Dates: April 2-4, 2008 Venue: SANDS Expo Convention Center Location: Las Vegas, Nevada URL: http://www.iscwest.com Contact: [email protected] Description: Industry professionals rate ISC West the best security event in the nation. Discover why at ISC West 2008, and meet your most challenging security demands head-on with thousands of the latest technologies and upgrades. In addition to […]

Sunnyvale, Calif., company Mu-Gahat officially launched today by announcing its “revolutionary custom RFID inlay design service, low-volume production minimums, and stock inlay line.” “Label converters, integrators, design engineers, and frustrated end-users have needed a solution for rapid prototyping and low-medium volume RFID production for quite some time,” said Baxter Watkins, CEO. “Our research showed that […]