GlobalPlatform: 15% growth in volume of standards-based smart cards
01 October, 2008
category: Contactless, Financial, Government, Health, Transit
GlobalPlatform, the international smart card specifications association, has released figures showing an estimated annual increase of 15% in the total number of smart cards that use the GlobalPlatform Card Specification as the basis for card infrastructure.
The organization estimates that since October 2007, the number of deployed GlobalPlatform based smart cards has risen from 265 million to 305.7 million worldwide. Ninety GlobalPlatform-based card implementations have been reported across Europe, Asia, Australasia and the Americas.
The break down of the sectors using GlobalPlatform are:
• 45% (137.6 million cards) has been issued by governments, primarily for ID and healthcare applications;
• 32.7% (100 million cards) has been issued by the mobile telecommunications sector;
• 21.9% (66.9 million cards) has been issued by the financial sector;
• 0.4% (1.2 million cards) has been issued by the transit sector.