Smart cards - don't hold your breath

If you are waiting for a cashless society of smard card holders don?t hold your breath, advises the Smart Card Forum.

Smart cards resemble credit cards but have a computer chip embedded in the plastic which can store your life details from money, health record and identification to supermarket loyalty points.

At the moment each smart card has its own proprietary system, which means you would end up carrying a wallet full of cards around.

The Smart Card Forum, however, has released a study maintaining that more than 65 per cent of the people it surveyed want all their data on one or two cards at most. They also want the option to add applications to a card such as a record of drug prescriptions.

Banks however are keen to establish their own intellectual property rights and establish their own smart card brand recognition before a standard is set.

They realise it will be a highly competitive market. They also complain that standards bodies move in such a snail like fashion that it would be easy for Microsoft to hop into the ring and set a de facto standard.

?Gates has the resources to distribute 200 million cards with every PC and essentially create his own standard,? explained Miguel Abranowicz, vice president of Citibank at a Smart Card Forum discussion.

Europe and Asia is currently far more active in smart card technology than the US. Norway, for example, has already issued its entire population with smart cards to carry medical records and identification.