The market for smart cards and secure ICs achieved double-digit year-over-year growth for shipments in 2011, demonstrating increases of 16% and 15%, respectively, according to ABI Research

Volumes continued ramping up, driven by further mobile penetration, the ongoing developments in the SIM card sector and the number of countries migrating to EMV. The top three applications – government ID, payment cards and SIM – accounted for 88% of the total seven billion smart cards shipped in 2011. Further adoption in contactless cards added increased value to the market, as will the greater demand for multi-application cards. 

Barclays Bank PLC announced that the Barclaycard Wireless Festival 2012 is to be fully contactless enabled, giving attendees the ability to enjoy the experience without having to carry cash.

All vendors at the festival will accept contactless payments, allowing festival-goers to spend less time queuing and more time listening to music. All forms of contactless payment will be accepted including Barclaycard PayBand, a specially designed wristband that allows customers to pay for goods quickly and easily using contactless technology. 

Evolis introduced its new card printer, coined Primacy, suited for instantly personalizing cards in medium to large runs, single or dual-sided and for a range of applications.

Primacy is equipped either with a single or double-sided option, which can be enabled on-site and made available for encoding options for magnetic stripes, smart cards or contactless cards. The printer personalizes color cards, up to 210 cards per hour for one side and 140 cards per hour for dual-sided printing. 

Missouri State University has selected Blackboard Transact to implement a contactless student ID card. This enables the new system to integrate student identification, door security, commerce and campus payment into a single contactless card.

The new BearPass ID card uses Sony’s FeliCa contactless technology and works with Blackboard-enabled smart card readers–which also support magnetic stripe technology–for faster and more secure transactions. 

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) released a statement concerning a glitch in its Clipper card system, and the blame for overcharging certain AC Transit passengers, according to SFExaminer.com.

Traditionally, AC Transit passengers who make bus transfers are only charged 25 cents for their second leg, even if they split up that journey with a trip on BART. However, for a two-month stretch earlier this year, Clipper card readers were not recognizing that first trip, leading to overcharges. 

The Open Standard for Public Transport (OSPT) Alliance announced that austriamicrosystems has joined as a full member.

Since joining the OSPT Alliance, austriamicrosystems will have access to the CIPURSE open standard specification, leveraging its experience into embedded systems for mobile fare collection applications. The open standard promotes vendor neutrality and cross-vendor system interoperability with reduced technology adoption risks, higher quality and improved market responsiveness. 

HSBC announced that it will begin the conversion to contactless technology this month, replacing all customer banking debit cards, according to ThinkMoney.com.

The bank will start to roll out the new contactless cards to existing customers whose debit cards are due to expire this month and then continue the process as cards expire. Customers who don’t want a contactless card can opt out by contacting their bank before their current card expires.