Why are organizations moving to smart card technology?
The reasons organizations adopt smart cards are wide and varied; many look to
smart cards to assist them in consolidating customer relationships and subsequently
better deliver products and services. In the simplest form, smart cards can readily
provide authentication of customer identity, whether in the virtual or the physical
world. However, many organizations go much further, adding their own and strategic
partners products to the card. This enables them to differentiate their products
and services from competitors and to provide a better service proposition to their
customers.
What has been the major development in the acceptance of smart cards supporting
multiple products (i.e. multi-function and multi-application smart cards)?
The key development in recent years has been the introduction of commonly accepted
card operating systems and API's, such as MULTOS, Javacard / Open Platform,
MS Windows for Smart Cards and Mifare. This has brought into the realm of the
possible 'write once / run anywhere' software development - thus allowing product
managers to develop a product application and be able to load it onto a wide
range of smart cards both about to be issued and already deployed. More recently,
many card issuers have realized that high utility smart cards supporting multiple
products from several industries are now technically possible, financially viable
and provide a significantly stronger consumer proposition. This has led to an
increasing number of cards being launched supporting multiple financial, travel,
e-commerce, loyalty and / or retail products simultaneously.
Which industries and geographies are leading market growth?
The financial industry is increasingly taking the lead in the deployment of
multiple product smart cards, with initiatives from American Express and more
recently the major card associations (Visa and MasterCard) in both North America
and Europe breaking the barriers. However, there are numerous organizations
in the travel, retail, telecommunications, e-commerce and public sectors which
are leaders in their individual markets, and are developing innovative and highly
compelling multiple product smart card programs which are likely to position
them strongly for many years to come.
Why will Arterium be the defacto industry standard for transaction infrastructure
management?
As one of the two leaders in its field today, Arterium is certainly well positioned
to become a defacto standard in key geographies and industries. As we continue
to regularly enhance Arterium to provide greater functional depth and breadth,
we continue to provide the functionality required by the market if not in advance
of their needs, then certainly in line with them. Together with the open design,
scalability and robustness of Arterium, we believe Arterium will continue to
be a recognized leader in this industry well into the future.
Will single product smart cards become redundant?
In the short to medium term, there are certain smart card markets where single
product smart cards will continue to present a strong proposition; including
their use to support GSM based mobile telephony and certain high specificity
payment and security products. In the medium to long term (three to five years),
the strong financial proposition, both in terms of cost sharing and greater
cardholder utility, will likely drive the vast majority of issuers toward smart
cards able to support multiple cross-industry products simultaneously.
Will smart cards replace magnetic stripe cards? If so, when?
Smart cards have now been selected by many industries globally as the basis
of their future card issuing activities. Whilst the upgrading of existing infrastructures
will take up to a decade, it is clear that the vast majority of generally accepted
payment cards globally will utilize smart card technology by 2010, with the
telecommunications and public transit industries following a similar timeline.
As products deployed by these industries present the greatest acceptance proposition,
it is difficult to see magnetic stripe cards retaining a significant share of
card activity by 2010.
What is the 'next big thing' in smart cards?
The support for contact and contactless communications on a single smart card
will likely be the next big thing for the smart card industry. This will allow
a single smart card to carry out, for example, complex, highly secure payment
transactions as well as extremely fast transit ticketing, again increasing the
consumer proposition and improving utility for the cardholder.
