Thursday 4 March 2010 at 11:44
Since the inception of NFC, everyone has been trying to link this new technology to existing infrastructure. The RF part of the NFC standards were specified to be compatible with ISO 14443. The rationale was: “we have an existing contactless infrastructure compliant with this standard, and we will bring a new means of use of this infrastructure with mobile phones and other secure portable objects”.
Thursday 25 February 2010 at 11:19
The SIM card has been in existence for over 20 years now (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #09-08). This means that the industry has had to permanently reinvent its role. At the beginning, the SIM was just a convenient media to store subscriber details.
Thursday 18 February 2010 at 11:03
Our smart card industry is still in need of recognition. Even in a focused high tech environment like the Mobile World Congress (MWC), this week in Barcelona, not everyone has the same focus as the smart card industry. For instance, everyone in the Congress has his mind turned to Windows 7 announcement, and tries to anticipate the future split between various operating systems.
Thursday 11 February 2010 at 11:30
For years the mobile communication industry has kept trying to enter the payment business, with limited success. Now, after technology and business model evolutions, we witness a new era of mobile payment development.
Thursday 4 February 2010 at 13:12
Inside Contactless just announced its was offering its NFC Stack under an Open Source license. This announcement just comes shortly after Nokia’s announcement that the company was now offering under an Open Source license the Navteq navigation system it acquired at the end of 2007 for US$ 8 million (EUR 5.2 billion) (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #10-04).
Thursday 28 January 2010 at 11:07
In the last couple of years, we already witnessed profound changes in the payment terminal industry on a global basis. We have seen major POS terminal manufacturers engaging in a race to critical size. Now, the industry has an interesting structure, with three Tier 1 POS terminal manufacturers, Ingenico, Verifone and Hypercom. All of them have a combination of a recognized technical expertise, a global market reach, means to influence technology and markets, and a strategic vision of the future of the industry. Most Tier 2 vendors have been acquired by the Tier 1 vendors in the last couple of years.
Thursday 21 January 2010 at 16:43
"Cash is dirty, cash is heavy, cash is quaint, cash is expensive, cash is dying", this was a Visa advertisement several years ago that even made it to the front page of The New York Times. At the end of the last century, we all thought cash was bound to disappear shortly. We had set up credit cards, debit cards, electronic purses, etc. and we thought all these solutions were so much better than cash that within a decade cash would be a thing of the past. Now, in 2010, we have to realize we still have banknotes and coins in our pockets.
Thursday 14 January 2010 at 10:39
Traditionally, the first issue of the year is where analysts express their vision and anticipation for the year to come. Let’s do this exercise and see what’s next for 2010:
Thursday 10 December 2009 at 12:14
Maybe it’s due to the proximity of Christmas, and a seasonal inclination for miracles and other supernatural phenomena, it seems that the rumor mill is running full speed nowadays.
Thursday 3 December 2009 at 14:27
Industry analysts often publish reports targeting a given issue, or a given technology or a given market as they need to precisely define their subject, in order both to perform their research and to sell it. Doing this, the risk they face is to concentrate on only some aspects of the issue, and to miss having a broader view.
Thursday 26 November 2009 at 12:31
The common point between several announcements made on the occasion of the last Cartes trade show is speed. Each of us is used to the high data rates provided by high speed internet connections on our laptops, and the advent of 3G, and soon 4G, on our handsets. Now, the secure transaction industry feels its users are getting impatient if they have to wait for a transaction to be completed.
Thursday 19 November 2009 at 11:17
Didier Chaudun, president of Eurosmart, summed up with these words the general mood of Cartes exhibition this year. The presidents and CEOs of the major players in the industry (Gemalto, Ingenico, Infineon, Giesecke & Devrient, Visa, Eurosmart, Sagem Orga, MasterCard, NXP Semiconductors Hypercom) were all in agreement on the fact our industry was more resilient than others by the economy shakeout.
Thursday 12 November 2009 at 12:55
As Cartes, the most important event of the year for our industry is getting closer, it is time to evaluate how we are doing. Our secure transactions industry demonstrates a good resistance to the ongoing global crisis. Our major customers, mobile network operators, banks, governments, etc. have kept on placing orders to the smart card industry, due to the sustained demand they were experiencing.
Thursday 5 November 2009 at 10:38
Regular Smart Insights Weekly readers are all aware the mobile phone is the technology that has experienced the fastest adoption ever. The first GSM network was launched in 1991, and at the end of 2009, ITU (International Telecom Union) estimates there are 4.6 billion mobile phones in use, out of a 6.8 billion world population.
Thursday 29 October 2009 at 11:54
After years of speeches, SEPA (Single Euro Payment Area) is set to take off next week, on November 2nd, 2009. The SEPA vision was part originally promoted as a consequence of the European common currency. As with the Euro there are no barriers for paying cash within the Euro area, there should be no barrier for paying with financial instruments. THE Commission and the ECB define SEPA as a set of means to have “no distinction between cross-border and national payments within the euro area”.
