OPINION
Smartcards mean secure cashless transactions
27-10-2000
by Bernie Goldbach
You've certainly seen first generation smart cards being used aboard state-run transportation in Ireland.
Long-term commuters jump through queues by using season tickets on their journeys. Magnetic stripes on the back of the tickets can give expiration details, journeys remaining, and patterns of usage. Most consumers accept these cards because they're as convenient as swiping a charge card through a check-out counter.
Experts would quickly point out that these season tickets aren't really smart cards because they lack either an embedded computer chip or memory to store information. Phone cards have the microprocessor as do electronic
wallets and purses.
A smartcard basically consists of three parts: (1) a plastic card with or without a magnetic stripe; (2) an electronic module supporting the electrical contacts; (3) a silicon integrated circuit. All of the components -- central processing unit, memory, and I/O -- are in the same
integrated circuit chip with electrical connections tying them together. This makes the card more secure because it's difficult for foreign signals to tamper with the interconnections of the components inside the chip.
There are two types of chips used inside smartcards: memory chips and microprocessor chips. Smartcards with only memory chips are simply storage devices that cannot process information. The cards are very similar to
magnetic-stripe cards in this respect, although they hold more data. Memory cards are less expensive than microprocessor cards and have correspondingly less security. Memory cards can support basic applications, such as telephone cards.
Although several prominent players are promoting electronic wallets, most smartcard development in Ireland has focused on enhancing the integrity of the data on the magnetic stripes. Swiping smartcards across set-top web browsers give much more protection to data than secure web pages. Irish developers are leveraging smartcard processing power through software kits available from Bull, Gemplus, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Schlumberger, and Siemens Nixdorf.
Some of the most effective uses of smartcards in Ireland happen in third level colleges.
Tipperary Institute plans to use smartcards as sign-in devices inside its cyber cafe. A smartcard doubling as a student identification card will be used for tracking class rosters and controlling after-hours facility use.
If you intend to buy lunch in the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), you must use a campus card when you reach the end of the service line. You'll find the coin slots are disabled on the Coca-Cola machines-replaced by smart card readers. In addition to being smartcard equipped, WIT's Coke machines are on-line too. This means a systems administrator can query the Coke machine to see stock levels.
What does it mean when smartcards work with on-line devices? The entire WIT campus card system is on-line. Six people are working full-time to develop applications that support the on-line card system in Waterford. Students
deposit funds into an online account (or over the counter as cash). Whenever they need to make a payment with their card, the money is transferred from their personal account into the appropriate service account. The card pays for photocopying, meals, and miscellaneous purchases.
Many stateside universities have discovered that their smartcards reduce paper waste. Loyola Marymount University uses its OneCard System as pay-for-print. Students swipe their cards through readers attached to printers or photocopies. Their on-line smartcards give them 250 free pages. The system allows the university to charge visitors for their prints. Unlike electronic purses (where monetary values are transferred to the card), an on-line smartcard keeps all the money in a central place on a server. The University of North Dakota has linked its smart cards to an OMNI mainframe database for the purpose of student voting. Students swipe in, the system verifies they haven't voted, and then records their vote. Pittsburg State University's smart card voting terminals serve up the ballot that each student is supposed to receive.
Newer smartcards used by several companies in Dublin's Citywest Business Campus don't need to make contact with the card reader. These contactless cards use an electromagnetic signal and an antenna on each smartcard to
create the conversation between the card and the card reader. The microwave frequencies employed also provide the card with its power source. These nonbattery-powered cards need to come within 2 to 3 inches of the card reader to be powered. Contactless cards in Singapore keep transportation
queues moving, since passengers merely have to wave their cards near the device, instead of inserting and removing a card.
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