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December 2006 • Volume 11 Number 12 |
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Executive Director's Letter Dear members and friends of the Alliance, Let me begin by sharing my sincere wishes for a wonderful holiday season, and a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a Happy New Year to everyone of our readers from around the globe. This is the time of year that I reflect on personal and professional riches that I have experienced in my role as the Executive Director of the Smart Card Alliance. I went back through the full year’s issues of Smart Card Talk and was amazed at the sum of all that we have accomplished as an organization. After years of starts and stops, often with one part of the industry declining while another part is advancing, this year was the first year I can remember when everything about the smart card industry seems to accelerating equally, like a well-tuned engine running on all its cylinders. Let's all hope that there is still plenty of fuel left in the tank for next year and beyond. The year began with nearly every industry council delivering new projects at once. We had the Smart Cards in Parking paper, the Top 10 Hot Identity Topics, and Contactless Payments: The New Era in Payments for Merchants, the first of many new reports on this subject. Shortly after these publications were released, the Smart Card Applications in the U.S. Healthcare Industry report was published. We took the RSA Security Conference 2006 by storm in February with the expanded Smart Card Pavilion and a smart card tutorial by our Educational Institute, and listened attentively as Bill Gates and Microsoft declared that user names and passwords would soon be replaced by smart cards and smart tokens. As winter turned to early spring, our Physical Access Council was deeply engaged with our government partners and staring at the looming October 27, 2006 deadline for the government’s compliance with the HSPD-12 directive and issuance of smart card IDs using the new FIPS 201 standard. The debates and revelations about new government ID cards and new electronic passports came to a peak right at the time of the Alliance’s 5th Annual Smart Cards in Government Conference in April. The event drew a record crowd and featured three days of interesting discussions and demonstrations of the significant progress the smart card industry had made since the previous year. We also heard government leaders talk in detail about the Western Hemisphere Traveler Initiative (WHTI) passport card, the DHS First Responder Authentication Credential (FRAC), and a new standardization effort for the Registered Traveler program. As the cherry blossoms were blooming in Washington, the long delayed Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program came back to life under the TSA and U.S. Coast Guard.
This month, Smart Card Talk spoke with Steve Rogers, Vice President of Sales, Integrated Engineering, a leader in the contactless smart card industry that specializes in the areas of physical security, logical security, and border management. Steve is a recognized expert in the field of physical access control and contactless smart card technology. For over 27 years Steve has held high-level positions as a senior executive and corporate officer in the electronic security industry, including Vice President Security General, Vice President Sales for Radionics, Vice President and Director of PAC International, and Senior Vice President with The Blick Group. Steve is an active member of ASIS, SIA, and the Smart Card Alliance. He is a member of the Smart Card Alliance Identity Council, and, for the past two years, has held the position of Secretary of the Physical Access Council (PAC). He is a noted international speaker on security technology topics including: “Integrating Smart Card and Biometrics Technology,” “Selling Access Control,” and “The Threat of Cyber Terrorism.”
Contactless Payments: Consumer Attitudes and Acceptance in the United States Since mid-2005, leading financial issuers have put over 17 million contactless payment devices into the hands of U.S. consumers. That number is expected to grow significantly by the end of 2006. Financial institutions that have announced programs to provide consumers with contactless credit and debit cards or key fobs that contain a contactless chip include American Express, Bank of America, Citibank, Citizens Bank, GE Consumer Finance, HSBC Bank, JPMorgan Chase, KeyBank, US Bank and Wells Fargo. So far, the introduction of contactless payment has focused on markets in which transactions are typically of lower value, where consumers pay primarily with cash, and where speed and convenience are critical. The over 35,000 merchant locations in the United States that now accept contactless payments include quick service restaurants, convenience stores, pharmacies, theaters, and sports venues. An independent survey of consumer attitudes toward contactless payment devices, commissioned by the Smart Card Alliance and conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research in August, 2006, indicates that there is a large, untapped market for the use of these devices. This article describes the results of the survey and the implications of these results for financial institutions contemplating adoption of a contactless payment option.
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Executive Director's Letter
