Card Technology
Introduction

A smart card is a credit card sized plastic card with an embedded computer chip. They fall into two main categories, contact and contactless. A contact card requires insertion into a reader, which interrogates the card via physical contacts, whereas a contactless card need only be presented to a reader for the transaction to take place. There is also an emerging market in combination cards which combine the functions of both contact and contactless cards.

Contactless cards are growing in popularity due to the speed with which they read information. Leading the way is the MIFARE® card developed by Philips Semiconductors, which integrates 85% of all contactless card schemes world-wide - represented by an installed base of 45 million cards.

Counter Solutions can provide systems for producing ID cards which are also capable of preparing smart cards in one integrated process, according to the Mifare standard.