Friday, August 20, 2010

2 smartcard

12. Smart Card Uses
Literally, billions of smart cards are already in use. Worldwide smart card sales could reach 1.6 billion units in 1998, up 23% from 1.3 billion units in 1997. Western Europe accounts for about 70% of the current smart card uses, followed by South America and Asia with about 10% each, while North America languishes at less than 5%. However, most smart cards issued today are memory cards (see Table) with limited processing capabilities. Still, hundreds of millions of processor cards are already in use today.


Smart Cards Issued in 1996 (in million units)
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Phone cards 605
Health cards 70
Banking 40
ID/access cards 20
Pay TV cards 20
GSM cards (mobile phone) 20
Transportation 15
Metering/vending 10
Others 10
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Total 810
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Source: Smart Card Industry Association


Phone cards have become ubiquitous in Western Europe and Asia where coin-operated public phones are becoming nearly obsolete. These pre-paid cards increase payphone operator revenues, allow more sophisticated transactions via public phones, and have become advertising devices as well as collector's items. Although the popularity of phone cards contributed to a widening acceptance of smart cards by consumers, however, processor cards are projected to be the fastest growing smart card uses by the year 2000.

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