Smart cards are transforming business around the world from reducing fraud and opening up on-line transactions in banking, personalizing services for mobile phone users, to securing access to PCs and corporate networks, and speeding transportation by using electronic ticketing. The most common uses of smart cards today are: banking and retail, mo-bile communications, information technology, identity and health, park-ing, public telephony, mass transit and campus ID solutions; and areas of use increase every day. One of the most fast developing areas of smart cards use is Banking and Retail. For business of financial transactions is very competitive and fast-changing, banks are always seeking for new valuable services for their customers.
Smart cards give an ability to deploy and manage multiple ap-plications on a wallet-size plastic card. Smart card technology also prom-ises to resolve the security problems through a better methods of protec-tion against theft and fraud. Here is a small list of advantages that smart cards are supposed to pro-vide: + can be used as credit, direct debit, or stored value cards. + Reduce fraud, due to the difficulty of counterfeiting the microchip, and due to the mutual authentication required between cards and terminals. + Require transactions to be approved via individual PIN codes, not by signature, again reducing fraudulent use.
+ Enable loyalty schemes to be effortlessly integrated, giving regular card customers advantageous services (discount on-street-parking, in-store reductions etc.). ()
