Frost & Sullivan, the U.S. research firm, recently predicted that government ID projects will drive growth for smart cards and that Java CardTM from Sun is being used and is well placed to take advantage of this market opportunity.

Many U.S. government organizations will use or are using smart cards, including the Treasury department, Homeland Security, Justice, Interior departments and NASA. In Europe, the Belgian government was the first EU country to issue Java Card citizen ID to their 11 million population.

Commercial products containing Java Card technology are available today from many vendors around the world. For example SIM GSM cards are used for standard wireless networks, 3G USIM cards are used for advanced wireless networks, banking cards are compliant with Visa, MasterCard and American Express payment applications, and ID cards support PKI functionality.

Java Card products support fingerprint "match on card" biometric functions. The Java Card 2.2.2 platform specification is designed to enable interoperability for multiple-interfaces contactless cards.

Java Cards are used in many industries beyond government, including the financial services sector. Visa issued tens of millions of Java Card technology-based bank cards and has introduced a new contactless program called "Visa Wave." Citibank's MasterCard and the American Express "Blue" cards leverage Java Card technology. Growth is expected in online banking by consumers using smart cards. [...read more...]

		fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter