It has taken time but a worldwide focus on both physical security (protecting buildings and facilities) and logical security (protecting data and networks) is hastening the development and deployment of radio frequency identification (RFID). No longer simply a tool for inventory control, mass scale utilization of RFID for fare collection, identity verification, payment and other […]

Washington, D.C. made history when it became the first U.S. city to deploy a contactless smart card system- wide for mass transit. The Smar- Trip® card has gained widespread acceptance in the Washington, D.C. area, particularly in the past year. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has more than 300,000 SmarTrip® customers and adds an […]

BY JOHN FRANK CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Visa International’s decision to endorse a global payment specification for contactless cards based on the ISO 14443 specification may have far reaching implications. The decision likely will lead other payment organizations to consider doing the same and so could spur the evolution of multipurpose contactless cards. But experts and Visa […]

Not to be outdone, Mastercard is piloting contactless payment–called PayPass™– in Orlando, Florida. In a project announced on December 12, 2002, the payment card association detailed its launch of a contactless card that holds and transmits the same data that is contained on track 2 of the magnetic stripe (the data used to route and […]

Any question of the surge in contactless technology interest was answered by the activity at the CARTES exposition in France in early November. More than 10,000 attendees from around the globe descended on Paris’ Parc de Exposition to see the latest in identification technologies. The exhibit floor was packed with more than 300 vendors displaying […]

During the Contactless Technology in Transportation session at CARTES, Nicole Carrol of EDS announced that London’s contactless ticketing project was officially launched. The much-anticipated name for the card is the “Oyster.” According to Ms. Carrol, the name has meaning because “the oyster protects a pearl in much the same way that the card protects the […]

Leading chip manufacturers Fujitsu and STMicroelectronics announced co-development of a new contactless chip based on Ferroelectric Random Access Memory or FRAM. While other companies utilize FRAM for contactless applications, this will be the first mass market FRAM product to comply with one of the international contactless standards. The new ST 19ZR01 chip will meet ISO […]