6. Smart Cards

There are a wide variety of contact and contactless smart cards currently in use. The Terms "Smart Chip Card", "IC Card", and "Smart Card" all refer to the same type of card. Smart cards have a chip embedded in them which can be programmed. Smart cards can store over 100 times more information than a magnetic stripe and they can be reprogrammed to add, delete, or rearrange data.

Smart Cards in Europe. Smart cards were invented in Europe in the 1970s and were in wide use in Western Europe by the early 1980s. Smart cards began as an easy, inexpensive way for European businesses to do off-line transaction verification. Off-line verification is preferred due to the high cost of telecommunications in Europe.

Smart Cards in the U.S. The United States has been slow to implement smart cards because it requires replacing the widely installed magnetic stripe card reading equipment with smart card readers. The cost of having the current magnetic stripe readers "on-line" via telecommunications is relatively inexpensive in the U.S.

Microprocessor Smart Card

The second type of smart card contains both a microprocessor as well as memory. These cards can store massive amounts of information, and the micro-processor enables the card to make its own decisions regarding the information stored.

Both types of chips can be addressed by Eltron card printers since they all offer an optional smart card contact station. The printer brings the card into the contact station and then passes programming signals from an external programmer to encode the smart chip.

Contactless smart cards and proximity cards utilize various short and long range RFID technologies to write and read. Many card printers print on these kinds of smart cards. Encoding or programming the electronic devices on these cards is typically accomplished by an external encoding or programming device, but contactless smart card encoders integrated into the card printer are becoming increasingly available.