Keeping card data secure at low cost

The plastic card is indispensable in the daily life of most people, and its use is growing fast. Already widespread in banking, retail, prepaid telephone, ticketing and access control, the use of a card is expanding to take in other applications such as identity and the electronic purse. As the importance of the card and the transaction that it enables grows, so too does the need for security. The paper describes a new way by which technologies can be combined to give a card that offers both security and data storage, which can be tailored to the needs of the application, and does so very cost competitively. The approach is illustrated by the example of an identity card which could hold a digitised photograph or signature, be secure, and have a cost well below that of an integrated circuit Smartcard.