Big opportunities for smart cards in SA

The "Global Smart Card Industry - Future Outlook (2007)" report, available at Research and Markets, states there is a huge demand for smart cards across the world, as they are widely used in almost every sector. The main demand driver is the telecoms market.

Of the various countries across the world, SA is seen as a high opportunity region.

The report also notes that rapid technological developments in smart cards are going to further strengthen this market.

The US government plans to use RFID chips in the proposed programme of passport cards for US citizens.

These ID cards will be mandatory for residents who do not have passports for their identification anywhere in the country or overseas, reports MediaSyndicate.com.

The State Department said that instead of using contact-less smart card technology "proximity read", it would use the RFID technology "vicinity read" in cards in these new e-Passports.

A smart card industry consortium says its "second generation" of smart card technology predicts that the cards or tokens will be on the market by the end of the year, according to Card Technology.

The smart cards and other personal devices, which could include USB tokens and flash memory cards, would support such common IT protocols as TCP/IP, as well as high-level programming languages and standard interfaces.

This would allow the cards or tokens to connect seamlessly to PCs and other networked devices.