Technology Toolkit

The History of Smart Card Technology

The smart card as we know it has become a very common convenience and it was introduced in it’s modern form in 1978. These days smart cards are seen in a wide variety of devices that we use every day from cell phones to credit cards, debit cards and memory devices. The main function of the smart card is to use the technology of compact chips to process data inside whatever device it is used in. Smart cards resemble credit cards, many of which have proportions which are identical to their credit and debit card cousins, with the also similar magnetic stripe on the back. Rather than relying thousands of microscopic magnets oriented in a particular way to represent the user’s information, smart cards can electronically store considerably more information with the use of a microchip. Generally they are used for financial payment instruments, security badges and authentication mechanisms for computer equipment.

Contact Based Smart Cards

Quite simply, contact based smart cards are those which need to be plugged into something in order for them to work. There are two types of these contact based smart cards available, one of which is a memory card which will only allow memory to be read and written to it. The other type is a microprocessor card which has processing capabilities as well as memory. It is the latter type of contact based smart card which is used in complex devices such as mobile phones and credit cards. Memory cards are the other common type of smart cards, being used as they are in cameras, laptops and other devices which makes use of storage. Mobile phones use these kinds of cards in order to add extra functionality to that which their SIM cards already provide.

Contactless Smart Cards

This type of contactless smart card communicates with other devices via the use of radio frequency identification technology (RFID). During the entire communication process the card at no point needs to touch the surface of the reading device. It is this sort of technology that is used to make activities such as boarding a bus or paying with a credit card much faster and easier.

Concerns Over Security

The introduction of thse contactless smart cards initially sparked fears over potential security risks. The worry was that since there was a distance between transmitter and receiver, a potential identity theif would be able to stand a small distance from the transmitter and read the data from the card. Fortunately these concerns were unfounded since data on the card was encrypted using at least 128-bit encryption, making it highly unlikely that any theif would be able to process the data.

Contact Sections

Smart cards can receive electrical signals from different locations from different readers. Every card reader that a contact based smart car is placed in will place it’s electrical contacts on top of the car, right above each section. to prevent signals from going to the wrong end of the card the metal contacts are split from one another.