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The first ever automated chip card was invented in 1968 in Germany by a scientist named Helmut Gröttrup along with his friend Jürgen Dethloff while working for a company Giesecke & Devrient. However they obtained a patent in 1982 when it was first used for the masses as Télécarte for French payphones in 1983.
In 1974, a French inventor Roland Moreno got a patent for the memory card concept. The smart card with microprocessor was invented by Michel Ugon of Honeywell Bull in 1977. Self Programmable One-chip microcomputer (SPOM) was patented by Honeywell Bull in 1978. It defines the necessary architecture for programming a chip and was used later by Motorola in its CP8. Within three years of this patent, Bull held about 1200 smart card related patents.
After that in 1992, microchips were integrated into the debit cards in the French Carte Blue. These used PIN to verify the card when the user inserted the card into the POS terminal of the merchant.
Smart cards became popular in the whole of the Europe in the mid 90s as Electronic Purse systems. The most notable were in Germany as Geldkarte, Belgium as Proton, France as Mon€o, Switzerland as Cash, UK as Mondex, Denmark as Danmont, Finlad as Avant etc.
In the same time, during 1990s the smart card technology made an entry in the communication industry and started working as SIMs in GSM mobile phones in the Europe. This industry has boomed over the years and popularized the smart cad all over the world.
In 2001, Schlumbeger brought the CP8 division and its patents from the Bull and combined its own internal smart card department to it and formed Axalto. The Gemplus, world’s No.1 smart card manufacture merged with Axalto, the then No.2 manufacture and emerged as Gemalto.
The most wide spread use of the smart cards was implemented by the Visa and Master Card. Here too the contactless technology of the smart card is becoming popular. The smart cards being convenient for both the user and the issuer are becoming popular as Identification equipments at the regional, national as well as the international level. The smart cards have developed as Driver’s License, Citizen Cards and Patient Cards. A very good example is the MyKad national ID scheme in Malaysia. It works in 8 different applications and is used by 18 million users. The ICAObiometric passports also make use of the contactless smart cards for international security purposes.
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