Smart Cards and Applications

A smart card is a plastic card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC). A smart card resembles a credit card, with the difference being a chip and (for most smart cards) its metal contacts. A host computer or smart card terminal runs the off-card application and communicates with the card’s embedded chip to exchange data and commands. The plastic card usually conforms to physical standards for bank/credit cards, and is a convenient and acceptable way of carrying the chip. Smart cards may contain a microprocessor, random access memory (RAM), read only memory (ROM), and electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM). The first patent for a smart card was issued in 1974 to Roland Moreno of France.