Smart Card Applications and New Standard Development
By Dr. Brad Paulson, Thor Engineering, ICMA Standards Representative
Initially developed in the 1970s, smart cards were introduced as credit card sized (ISO ID-1 or CR80) plastic cards containing embedded integrated circuits (ICs). Smart cards are already revolutionizing the way information is collected and managed, yet the potential for continued applications of smart cards in financial services (electronic purses, bank cards, online payment systems), healthcare (insurance cards), identification, retail, telecommunications (GSM mobile phones, DirecTV), and transportation industries appear to be nearly boundless.
The smart card chip can be a microprocessor with internal memory or a memory chip with non-programmable logic; connections with the chip can be made either by direct physical contact with the reader or contactless through an electromagnetic (radio frequency or RF) antenna. Instead of swiping a payment card, or handing a card to a cashier, consumers simply hold the contactless smart card next to a contactless payment terminal and the payment is processed. Applications that require the highest degree of information and communications security (for example, payment applications, government IDs, electronic passports) use contactless smart card technology based on an international standard that limits the ability to read the contactless device to approximately 4 inches (10 centimeters); applications that need longer reading distances can use other forms of contactless technologies that can be read at longer distances. Current and emerging applications using contactless smart card technology include financial and transit fare payment cards, government and corporate identification cards, and documents such as electronic passports and visas.
According to the Smart Card Alliance Contactless Payments Council, over the next few months, significant growth is expected in the adoption and use of contactless payments in the United States. American Express, MasterCard and Visa USA have all launched contactless payment initiatives, although the contactless payment cards introduced this year by such issuers as Chase, American Express, KeyBank and HSBC also carry a magnetic stripe so that they can be used at conventional terminals. Many of the nation’s top national and regional retailers, such as McDonald’s, 7-Eleven and CVS, have deployed point-of-sale terminals to accept the new contactless payment cards. Visa reports that there is potential to convert 450 million magnetic-stripe cards into contactless cards.
On 11 July 2005, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) formally adopted the machine-readable passport (MRP) specifications, developed collaboratively by ICAO and ISO Working Group 3 (WG3), as the worldwide standard for Passports. The formal adoption also embraces the specification governing issuance of the new high security, biometric-enabled version of the standardized Passport, or ePassport, as it has become known. In adopting the specifications as the worldwide standard, all 189 member countries of ICAO have agreed to issue their passports, including the new ePassport version, in conformance with the standard on, or before, 1 April 2010. While it is estimated that 150 countries currently issue their passports following the ICAO standard, several impending deadlines will result in over 40 countries implementing the ePassport before the end of October 2006. ISO WG3 agreed to recommend endorsement of the ICAO document and once approved, ISO/IEC 7501-1, Fifth Edition, will establish ISO endorsement. Many countries involved in ICAO are interested in incorporating a new visa, one containing a contactless IC chip, or eVisa, in keeping with the ePassport. Consequently, work is proceeding concurrently on Part 2 of ICAO Document 9303, covering Machine Readable Visas (MRV).
Due to the possibility of putting several eVisas, likely as stickers or cards, into MRPs, ISO Working Group 8 (WG8) has started to discuss the related technical details and constraints for defining them, and developing a standard. Further, during development of standards for limited use proximity IC cards (LUPICC), WG8 has become convinced that the specification needs to be expanded to allow several proximity IC cards (PICCs) into one operating field. This is particularly relevant to support the requested technical application for combining one ePassport related PICC with several eVisa PICCs inside one document. WG8 has drafted a new work proposal to initiate develop of such standards.