Japanese credit-card giant JCB Co. Ltd. is backing three Asian contactless card projects, convinced consumers will appreciate the quicker throughput and convenience of contactless technology. Two projects are in Japan while a third is in Taiwan. 

FreedomPay and Bank of America have generated considerable interest with the QuickWave program. The fall of 2002 saw the launch of a QuickWave pilot program by Bank of America near its Charlotte, North Carolina headquarters. The QuickWave program pilot involves 15 downtown restaurants and shops, bank-installed equipment and about 10,000 Bank of America employees. 

BY JANE ADAMS CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Traditionally, contactless technology has been used primarily for mass transit. However, during 2002 both Visa and MasterCard announced contactless payments specifications based on standardized contactless technology. Its use has also been growing in the access control and network security, and authentication markets. 

HID proximity cards can be read at distances up to 10 meters (33 feet) when combined with a signal booster from the Dutch RFID technology company, NEDAP. The new device called the Combi-Booster is designed for use in vehicles as a means to transmit both a vehicle identification number (stored in the Combi-Booster) and the driver’s card identification number (stored in the proximity card). 

The use of biometrics in conjunction with contactless smart cards is certainly high on many lists of security goals–but it has been a goal that is costly, time consuming, and technology-intensive to attain. With the development of the bioCLASS product line, Irvine, California-based HID is taking steps to change all that. 

With many transit systems in the process of updating their aging automatic fare collection systems and these same entities investigating or moving towards contactless technology, a new white paper from the Smart Card Alliance investigates the potential for fare collection cards to be utilized for additional payment functions outside the transit arena. 

TI has teamed up with TSSI and Third Millennium to provide RFID and fingerprint biometrics to manufactures and integrators of access control. This technology uses the latest generation of 13.56 MHz contactless ISO 15693 smart proximity cards from TI-RFid.  Combining the products has produced a practical and cost effective solution to integrating RFID with biometric technology.