The Smart Card Alliance recommends that health care provider use the EMV infrastructure for identity authentication to stop fraud. The alliance released a white paper detailing how converging EMV and health care identity could reduce costs and complexity for providers while reducing fraud.

Group demos new architecture for strong authentication with fingerprint; Fujitsu launched its STYLISTIC Q736 featuring different types of security technologies including palm vein biometric; BlackRidge Technology unveiled an app to provide real-time identity attribution; the Imprimerie Nationale Group and Gemalto have been awarded a multi-year contract to deliver an ePassport solution for Peru; Smartrac has obtained Common Criteria EAL6 certification for its Thailand production site.

The use of smart cards for patient ID would curb almost a quarter of Medicare fraud cases, according to a report from the GAO. The agency reviewed 739 health care fraud cases that were resolved in 2010 to try and find out how these schemes were conducted and if smart cards would prevent the fraud.

The World Wide Web Consortium announced new Web Authentication work based upon the member submission of FIDO 2.0 Web APIs from the FIDO Alliance; Zwipe released Zwipe ID, a card with fingerprint authentication capabilities targeted for the physical access control market; Synaptics announced a smaller fingerprint sensor.

Back in the day it was either contact or contactless interface for smart cards, choose one. But then came hybrid cards which offered both interfaces by embedding two separate chips on a single card. Today, however, demand is growing in multiple markets for dual-interface cards that offer both contact and contactless interfaces via a single chip.

The Smart Card Alliance opened the National Center for Advanced Payments and Identity Security, a new training center in Crystal City, Va.; Gemalto was selected by Gabon’s Department of Homeland Security to supply and implement a border and visa management system.

The underlying technology behind contactless smart cards hasn’t changed, but that does not mean manufacturers or their offerings have stagnated. Two of the biggest changes in contactless smart card technology are the speed of the chips and the memory capacity.

Over the course of 2015, re:ID looked at the state of national eID credentials, breaking down the global market into key regions. The final installment of the series focuses on the Middle East, a region that in 2016 expects to see a significant boom in the number of issued eIDs.