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October 2006 • Volume 11 Number 10 |
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Executive Director's Letter Dear members and friends of the Alliance, For those readers who attended the 2006 Annual Conference earlier this month in San Diego, CA, some of the following will be repetitious, but for the broad audience of this newsletter (which now totals nearly 5,500 readers) this is a much anticipated report of what took place at the event. The post-conference survey reviews have come in from the conference attendees and, by all accounts, the Alliance conference met and exceeded all expectations. Many of the comments were very complimentary of the venue, conference agenda, and the quality of the speakers and topics. Many thanks to all of the presenters and panelists for participating and for speaking so enthusiastically about their subjects. I'd like to particularly thank those who shared their real world experiences as smart card users and issuers from their perspectives as government agency, financial issuer, transit systems operator, healthcare provider, or enterprise security provider. We may have saved the best for last (not deliberately, but due to scheduling problems) by enjoying a rousing luncheon keynote address on the final day from James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA and current vice president and officer at Booz, Allen, Hamilton. Mr. Woolsey gave a captivating overview of the world political forces behind today's global terrorism threats.
Transit and Contactless Financial Payments Since the late 1990s, U.S. transit agencies have made significant investments in contactless smart card-based automatic fare collection (AFC) systems. Over the past few years, the financial industry has begun introducing new payment media based on contactless smart cards for use in the retail point of sale environment. Both of these industries have settled on the common ISO/IEC 14443 standard defining the card/reader interface, which provides the opportunity to establish links between the two industries. The value proposition for the use of contactless smart cards in the mass transit marketplace has been well documented for more than 15 years. Many, if not most, transit agencies throughout the world have recognized this value and have either implemented or planned for implementation of a contactless smart card in their fare environments. These implementations have generally made use of agency-issued smart cards that are typically used in the closed transit systems only, or in some cases also used in retail locations that have been established as extensions of the closed transit systems. These are typically stored-product implementations where the card holds the fare product or cash value that is updated with each use of the card.
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This month, Smart Card Talk spoke with Mohammad Khan, President and Founder of ViVOtech. Mr. Khan held several engineering, marketing, and business development management positions during the 15 years he worked with VeriFone. Joining VeriFone in its early stage in 1983, Mr. Khan helped the company develop its payment automation systems and later helped successfully market these products in more than 96 countries. Included were the smart card and security payment products he conceived for VeriFone and launched to its worldwide markets in the early 1990s. He was also a co-founder of the Internet Commerce Division within VeriFone and was responsible for the expansion of VeriFone's Internet payment systems business into more than 25 countries. VeriFone grew to $600 million in revenue before being acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.2 billion in 1997. Mr. Khan is a co-founder of Sparkice, Inc., China's e-Hub for global commerce, where he worked as its senior vice president. He holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Mr. Khan was recognized as a leader of the Electronic Payments Industry by the Transaction Trends Magazine in 2006 and as a “Mover and Shaker” of the Electronic Payments Industry by the Transaction World magazine in 2005.
Executive
Director's Letter
