Smart Card Alliance Smart Card Talk
June 2008 • Volume 13 Number 6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Council and Task Force Report

Alliance Members:   Participation in all current councils is open to any Smart Card Alliance member who wishes to contribute to the council projects.  If you are interested in participating in any of the active councils, please contact Cathy Medich (cmedich@smartcardalliance.org).  


Transportation Council

  • The Council has published the new white paper, "Serving Unbanked Consumers in the Transit Industry with Prepaid Cards." This white paper was developed to provide the transit and financial industries with an educational overview of the various methods available for providing and re-loading fare media to individuals who do not have credit or debit cards, nor checking or savings accounts, and generally lack relationships with traditional banking institutions.

    Mike Nash (ACS) led this project, with project team contributors Jake Avidon (MTC), Nancy Baunis (Power2Process), Ted Bergh (Metro/SORTA), Doug Deckert (WMATA), Paul Korczak (NYC Transit), Tim Walsh (Ready Credit Corporation), and Burt Wilhelm (MasterCard).

  • The Council is now developing a statement of security practices used in the transit industry as a educational document.


Physical Access Council

  • The Physical Access Council is planning the agenda for an in-person members-only Council meeting at the 7th Annual Smart Cards in Government Conference in Washington, DC, in October.
  • Nominations are closed for the 2008/2009 Steering Committee, with elections to be held later this month.


Healthcare Council

  • The Healthcare Council is developing an education program to raise the awareness of smart cards and their use in healthcare applications.


Contactless Payments Council

  • The Merchant Business Case Work Group is developing a merchant return on investment model for implementing contactless payments.
  • The Mobile Payments Work Group is completing a detailed research report on industry stakeholders' perspectives on emerging mobile payments business model scenarios. The report is scheduled to be published in July.
  • The Security Work Group is developing a new white paper to describe the security features that are available with smart card technology. The report is scheduled to be published later this summer.
  • Nominations are closed for the 2008/2009 Steering Committee, with elections to be held later this month.


Identity Council

  • The Identity Council is developing a new white paper on using FIPS 201 and smart cards for first responder programs. If you are interested in participating in this project, please contact Cathy Medich (cmedich@smartcardalliance.org).
  • The Identity Council has issued a "call for case studies." Alliance member organizations are invited to submit case studies showcasing the use of smart cards in ID applications in any part of the world. The Smart Card Alliance will be creating a new web resource that provides access to the case studies. If you are interested in submitting a case study, contact or Cathy Medich (cmedich@smartcardalliance.org).
  • Nominations are closed for the 2008/2009 Steering Committee, with elections to be held later this month.


Other Councils

  • A members-only council web site is available at http://www.sca-councils.org. This is a password-protected site that contains council working documents and contact lists. Each Council area has a separate password since Councils may have different membership policies. If you are a Smart Card Alliance member and would like access to the council site, please contact Cathy Medich (cmedich@smartcardalliance.org).
  • If you are interested in forming or participating in an Alliance council, contact Cathy Medich (cmedich@smartcardalliance.org).  Click here to download a description of the council structure, proposal process and council interest feedback form. 

New Members

SpringCard Inc.; San Diego, CA www.springcard.com
Membership Level: General
Member Point of Contact: Claire Artaud
Description: Contactless and smart card technology experts

ITC Systems, Inc.; Toronto, Ontario CA www.itcsystems.com
Membership Level: General
Member Point of Contact: Bob Merkert, Jr.
Description: International company specializing in integrated transaction control systems

IDmachines, LLC; Cambridge, MA www.idmachines.com
Membership Level: Associate
Member Point of Contact: Sal D’Agostino
Description: Consulting services to large scale enterprise and government identity management and access control systems

 

Web Site News

Updated web content

May 2008 web statistics

  • 83,313 visitor sessions for the month
  • 2,687 visitor sessions per day
  • 431,834 total page views for the month
  • 72,248 Industry News items viewed
  • 6,041 Card Reader Catalog items displayed
  • 9,701 PDF downloads
  • 76,440 Product and Service Directory page views

If you have any suggestions on content that you'd like to see on the Alliance web site, please send them to info@smartcardalliance.org.

Alliance in the News

The Alliance has an active communications program to promote industry messages in business, vertical market, and technology publications. Coverage results from both Alliance press releases and interviews with publications writing articles about smart cards. Selected recent coverage is shown below with links to online articles.

June 2008

May 2008

SCA Latin America News

The Smart Card Alliance Latin America project kicked off on October 19, 2004 with the presentation of the Department of Commerce Market Developer Cooperator Program (MDCP) award totaling $288,000 that forms a partnering effort between the International Trade Administration and SCA to develop international trade and support education, training, and resource development for smart cards in Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean Islands. The Alliance staff has held organizing meetings with ITA field office personnel in Mexico and Brazil to discuss ways to bring smart card awareness and education to the government and commercial markets in those countries. The Alliance has also met with ITA personnel based in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and Miami who are in support roles and are prepared to assist the Alliance's Latin American project.

In July 2005 the Latin America Chapter was launched. Organizations with smart card-related business interests in all Latin American countries and the Caribbean, plus any organization based in North America or internationally with interests in the Latin America markets, should contact Edgar Betts, Manager Business Development – Latin America at 1-954-642-8969 or ebetts@smartcardalliance.org. Memberships are available for Leadership Council, General, Government, and Associate levels.

In May, 2007 the Smart Card Alliance held the first smart card business conference and exhibition in Mexico City. The two day event, developed jointly with the GlobalPlatform organization featured drew more than 200 attendees and featured industry experts from across the Latin American region representing the government ID and security markets and the bank card and mobile payments markets. The event was the first of many future educational and business networking events planned to unite the suppliers and issuers of smart card technology together under the guidance of the Smart Card Alliance Latin American Chapter.

A recent report released by Frost & Sullivan called The Americas Smart Card Market Analysis projected microprocessor smart card shipments of 136.4 million in 2005, and with over a 59 percent annual growth rate projected through 2010. The Latin American smart card market growth is due to many market factors including the migration of mobile telecommunications operators to GSM technology, the migration to EMV in the financial sector, the move to smart transit fare cards and new government and commercial secure identification initiatives. Responding to these market factors, the Smart Card Alliance today announced the formation of a new Latin American chapter to bring together smart card suppliers, partners and customers in order to address the challenges facing smart card deployment in the region.

“The Latin American smart card market is now emerging and could develop more rapidly than other markets by effectively learning from similar smart card initiatives and by forming business partnerships that can quickly deliver successful implementations,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance.

The main mission of the Smart Card Alliance Latin American chapter is in line with the overall goal of the Alliance: to stimulate the understanding, adoption, use and widespread application of smart cards. The Alliance plans to use specific projects such as bi-lingual education programs, market research, advocacy, industry relations and open forums to keep Latin American chapter organization members connected to industry leaders and innovative thought.

“The Smart Card Alliance has played a valuable role in developing the U.S. market in both the public and private sector. Our organization provides an educational and collaborative forum in which all of the stakeholders—manufacturers, issuers and end users—can work together to develop the cross-industry real-world solutions needed to deploy smart card systems. Our organization is uniquely positioned to bring a collective energy and focus to this technology in Latin America,” said Vanderhoof.

Next Steps:

Below is a summary of the important Latin America Chapter programs and industry activities planned for 2008.

  • 2008 OSCA Awards for Latin America. The Outstanding Smart Card Achievement in Latin America award went to TIM Brasil, a mobile GSM company. TIM has been promoting the use of smart card technology for years. TIM has developed innovative solutions which use smart cards with digital certification and fingerprint match-on-card technology in order to guarantee strong authentication features in internal applications of the company. The Runner Up was Banrisul, the largest bank in Southern Brazil and the first bank in Latin America to implement a full-grade EMV program. Certisign received Honorable Mention for its smart card-based PKI solutions.
  • SCALA Elects 2008 – 2009 Advisory Council. The leadership council members of the Latin America Chapter held elections in December, 2007 to elect the leadership of the SCALA organization for the next two years.
    • Chair (active first year, supportive second year), Marcelo Bellini Garcia, sales and marketing director, Sagem Orga of Brazil
    • Chair (supportive first year, active second year), Humberto de la Vega, vice-president of sales, Latin America and the Caribbean, HID Global
    • Vice Chair, Ismael Dykman, government sales, Latin America, DataCard Group
    • Secretary, Luis Cohen, commercial director, Gemalto
  • Cards 2008 Brasil. The Smart Card Alliance is accepting applications from organizations wishing to exhibit in the Smart Card Pavilion. Cards 2008 Brasil is the largest card industry event in Brazil. In addition to the pavilion, SCALA will be holding an Educational Institute training course during the conference and assisting in the development of topics presented in the Transportation track during the conference. Contact Edgar Betts (ebetts@smartcardalliance.org) for more details.
  • Expanded Website. The Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA) website was redesigned with all new content in 2007. The new web site URL is http://latinamerica.smartcardalliance.org; or you can select “Latin America Chapter” from the Smart Card Alliance home page. In the coming months, additional white papers, event listings, member profiles, and news stories will be added to the site.
  • White Paper translation. The Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA) has translated five white papers into Spanish and Portuguese to allow the local markets to have access to valuable information in their language. The selection of the white paper to be translated was important in order to be significant to the local markets of Latin America. This action helps the Alliance create an image of not only a U.S. focused institution, but an international and local.
  • Online Educational Program. The Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA) in its efforts to expand its website deliverables to the market it has agreed to host a member online educational program. The program contains information about smart cards in both Spanish and English, covering from basic to some advanced knowledge.
  • Educational Institute – Certification Course. The Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA) Physical Access Council has worked on developing an Educational Institute (E.I.) course that will be used at Expo Seguridad Mexico conference in April 2007 on the use of smart cards for physical access. This course will be a classroom style course provided to the attendees of Expo Seguridad Mexico in the security market. It is intended to be a follow-up course to the physical access course that is provided by The Latin American Security Association (ALAS) at their conference events.
  • Educational/Promotional Video. The Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA) has held meetings with The Latin American Security Association (ALAS) and Obraweb to create online videos for the SCALA website. The idea would be to film one of SCALA’s Educational Institutes (E.I.) in high quality video to provide industry information and promote attendance to the Alliance.
  • Member invitation. The Smart Card Alliance Latin America (SCALA) with the leadership of the Transportation Council has developed a list of organizations in the transportation industry to send a formal invitation to join the Alliance and the transportation council. Due to the limited response of organizations in the region to join the Alliance and participate, the leadership of this council has agreed to use the contacts that the Alliance has acquired and invite them behalf of the transportation council to join our organization.
  • Articles for targeted industry magazines. The Alliance Latin America, Media Outreach Council has established several meeting in Brazil with other participating member organizations to organize the direction and responsibility of the council. As the council achieved it organizational logistics it began developing articles for publishing at identified magazines on behalf of the Alliance.

How to get involved:

If you would like to get involved in any of the Latin American activities listed above or wish to be added to the contact list for future announcements, please send an email to info@smartcardalliance.org.

 

 


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