Wal-Mart is insisting on EMV payment in its U.S. stores, according to storefrontbacktalk.com. The retail giant made the announcement that it’s “time for Chip-and-PIN in the U.S.” at the Smart Card Alliance conference in Scottsdale, Ariz last week. Wal-Mart’s director of payment services, Jamie Henry, told SCA conference attendees that it was “PIN or nothing,” […]

NXP Semiconductors has just joined the European Supply Chain Institute’s (ESCI) ‘Supply Chain Carbon Council,’ an organization dedicated to carbon emissions management and reduction. NXP is joining the Council as a Lead Sponsor of the multi-year program promoting the application of wireless technologies, such as RFID and NFC, to the problem of accurately tracking emissions […]

Aconite, a smart card business software and consulting services provider, announced that Datacard Asia Pacific has been awarded the contract to supply Aconite’s smart card management solution, Affina Enterprise, to ICBC, China’s largest bank. ICBC chose Affina Enterprise to enable them to personalize card services at both the regional and individual level through the upload […]

The Smart Card Alliance Health care Council announced a webinar reviewing the growing threat of medical identity theft and the policies and technology solutions that can address it. Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance, explains “For this webinar, the Alliance is bringing together experts in the field to discuss the serious problem […]

Starting June 16th, San Francisco will begin issuing new Clipper smart transit cards in place of existing TransLink passes. The new Clipper cards, which get their name from the speedy ships, work in the exact same way as TransLink, only the smart chip is embedded within the card, rather than displayed on the front. Old […]

Watchdata has announced the continued successful deployment of its SIMpass mobile payment solution in China. Around 200,000 China Telecom subscribers will soon be able to make low-value purchases in 11 cities of Jiangsu Province with local transit, e-purse or campus applications stored on SIMpass mobile cards. SIMpass was first launched with China Telecom in December […]

Newport Bus of Wales is implementing a new contactless fare collection system, according to BBC News. Newport Bus, along with the assembly government, will make some 650,000 smart cards available for purchase to Welsh riders, who can use the cards to pay for fares by simply tapping their cards against an onboard reader. The passes […]

Germany’s Stollmann announced the first chip set independent NFC application programming interface (API) for Android. The “NFaCe+A” API supports all NFC modes and features and can be used with different chip sets and NFC protocol stacks, including those from STMicroelectronics, NXP, Innovison, Polaric and more. The API, which is targeted for developers of standard NFC […]

Entrust has announced the official availability its SPOC e-passport solution. Developed by the European Union (EU) and the Brussels Interoperability Group (BIG), SPOC serves as the standardized mechanism for certificate management between countries for support of EAC-enabled e-passport. According to Brussels Interoperability Committee chairman Bob Carter, “SPOC is an absolutely necessary component for the efficient […]

LaserCard Corporation has announced it will present its newly released multi-technology smart card solution at the Smart Card Alliance 2010 Conference, May 17-20 in Scottsdale, AZ. The new ID solution features counterfeit-resistant optical security media coupled with other mainstream smart card technologies on a single card, tailored specifically for the needs of government ID programs […]