What is a Smartcard?
A smartcard is a plastic card similar in size and shape to your normal
credit card but instead of holding information on a magnetic stripe it
holds it in a small silicone chip embeded into the card.
A small gold or silver contact conected to the chip inside the card is
usually visible on the surface of the card.
What are smartcards used for?
Smartcards can be used in a very wide range of situations including:
- Phonecards
- Electronic Purses
- ID cards
- Access keys
- GSM mobile phone SIMs
- Pay TV subscriber cards
- Road toll payment cards
- Customer loyalty cards
... and many more.
What advantages do smartcards have?
Smartcards allow information to be stored on the card rather than
on a computer somewhere. This is an added advantage for security
and allows encryption techniques to be used in the card.
Smartcards are more durable than traditional magnetic stripe cards as
the chip cannot be affected by magnetic fields or scratches like the
magnetic stripe can.
Why collect smartcards?
Just as phonecards have become a popular collectable over stamps and coins
so the trend will follow with smartcards.
Smartcard collecting is just an extension of phonecard collecting, as many
telephone companies use smartcards as their phonecards, smartcard
collecting just extends the horizon. Electronic cash will become
more and more popular as will GSM mobile phones, so there will be a large
number of types of cards to collect.
As seen with phonecard collecting, most collectors end up collecting by theme.
So too smartcard collectors will be able to collect by many more themes,
not only by pictures, countries and companies but by types, categories and
uses as well.