The Evolution of Smart Card Technology

In a world where every well-intended advance in technology has a habit of soon being followed by someone finding a way to abuse it, it has become imperative to find an all-encompassing and secure solution to service virtually all facets of modern life.

Try to imagine a world with no keys, no wallet containing numerous ATM cards, credit and debit cards, retails cards, wads of cash (if you are so lucky), identification books, cards and papers.  Add to this list of unnecessary items your driver’s license, passport, medical aid membership card, health club membership card and various papers that tell you the statuses of all the above mentioned.  Now imagine all those components combined into one single physical card with a minute embedded gold-colored computer chip.  Sounds impossible?  In fact, one could go as far as calling it inevitable.

A Smart Alternative

Credit card fraud has long been the bane of banks around the globe.  And now, with internet shopping becoming more popular by the nanosecond, it has become extremely high priority to try and stabilize this thorn in the side of the financial sector.  The most notable benefits of smart cards must be their off-line functionality, the enhanced security and anti-fraud features and their ever-developing ability toward data manipulation.

The aim of finding more secure authentication methods would be to prevent the ease with which the older, signature based payment forms have been replicated and fraudulently used to date.  As an example, if a password is compromised it is a simple matter for an unauthorized hacker to gain access to a “protected” system.  But when the access to that same system also requires the physical presence of a computer chip smart card to be inserted into a reader, life is made that much more difficult for the would-be fraudster. Couple this with the further authentication using a Personal Identification Number (PIN) and the process becomes even more water-tight. What makes it even more attractive than the magnetic stripe security is the fact that, as soon as the security is compromised in any way, one can upgrade the software on the card without replacing the card.

The biggest surprise in the production of smart card, however, has to be the widespread spectrum of industries climbing onto the bandwagon.  It affects our daily lives and will become more evident very shortly.  Since it can be used for any application requiring the transportation of information or data authentication, it would seem that the original use of payments authentication has fallen somewhat behind already.