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| Subject: Dr Peter Keucher, of Infineon Technologies/Proton | |
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Author: Infineons 66P platform Proton World with EMV Plus. |
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Date Posted: 22:38:48 01/06/03 Mon Smart Card Industry Review 2000 by Jack Smith. Editor, Smart Card News This article was first published in our Monthly Newsletter, January 2001. The year 2000 saw many company take-overs, joint ventures and alliances, too many to mention them all. There were new products, including chips with much larger memories, and more applications coming on-stream, notably in public transport ticketing with contactless Smart Cards. There was growing interest in e-commerce and m-commerce with the involvement of public key encryption for digital signature security. Banks continued to migrate their payment cards from magnetic stripe to chip cards and we saw further expansion of electronic purse cards and the drive towards multi-application cards. The long-awaited adoption of Smart Cards in the United States was given a boost with the award of significant government contracts by the US General Service Administration for a Smart Access Common ID project valued at $1.5 billion over 10 years. The contracts went to five leading companies who are involving many Smart Card and biometric companies around the world as suppliers. Flotations UK-based Smart Card supplier ID Data plc floated on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. The company was formed in 1988 by Peter Cox with the purchase of a division of BPCC, which operated a card production plant in Corby. In 1999, it formed a joint venture with Toshiba Corporation and Toppan Printing Co of Japan, to form TTI Card Technology Europe. In the same year, ID Data acquired the Smart Card operations of GPT Card Technology and McCorquodale Card Technology. Acquisitions Giesecke & Devrient took over the National Westminster Bank's London-based personalisation centre for financial cards. Schlumberger acquired Canadian start-up telweb to position itself in the Web-based e-commerce and information networking market. On Track Innovations (OTI) acquired SoftChip, a chip design house with proprietary technology, with plans to develop Smart Card microprocessors with both contact and contactless interfaces. Datacard Group acquired London-based platform seven, developers of Mondex electronic cash, from NatWest Bank, part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, for an undisclosed amount. Gemplus bought ODS Landis & Gyr, the Smart Card division of Landis & Gyr Communications, to reinforce its market position in Germany and central Europe. Oberthur Card Systems acquired London-based SmartCards International with plans to combine its Card Management Solution with SCI's Nautilus system for an end-to-end solution giving instant access to detailed information about issuer's cards. The Pathways Group agreed to acquire Ticket Plus, a privately held computerised ticketing company headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii. Keyware Technologies took over Alacarte Engineering and formed KeywareCards to integrate its biometric authentication systems into Alacarte's Smart Card software. Upgrade International Corporation signed a letter of intent to acquire 100% of The Pathways Group in an all-share transaction. The Eastern Company agreed to purchase the assets of Greenwald Industries and Greenwald Intellicard, both subsidiaries of PubliCARD, for approximately $22.5 million. Greenwald Industries provides coin meter products used primarily in the commercial laundry industry while Greenwald Intellicard's products include Smart Cards, card readers and money transfer stations. Eastern manufactures and markets locks, latches, fasteners and other security hardware. ACG, Wiesbaden, took a 51% holding in Logos Smart Card headquartered in Lyngby, Denmark. Following an equity stake in Bluefish Technologies in May 2000, this move strengthened their GSM and WAP product strategy and boosted their Smart Card marketing segment. Sonera Corporation took over iD2 and transferred ownership to its wholly-owned subsidiary Sonera SmartTrust. iD2, headquartered in Sweden, offers PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) software for the Internet and Smart Card technology. Sonera Smart-Trust provides solutions for wireless e-commerce. Southland Financial signed a memorandum of intent to acquire Gold Phoenix Associates which has a 60% interest in "Ai Wei" Information Technology Corporation, a Chinese company with an exclusive right to distribute identification Smart Cards for the Chinese Health Card Registration and Management System requiring 240 million people to have an ID Smart Card over the next five years. Gemplus took over Celo Communications, a global provider of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) solutions for digital signatures, access control and network communications. Ingenico Fortronic bought Saunders Jefferies, a provider of electronic point of sale payment software, back office systems and business-to-business applications. The Saunders Jefferies name was changed to Ingenico Transaction Systems. AmaTech USA, a provider of contactless Smart Card manufacturing and development, acquired NBS Card Services which supplies over 50 million cards each year for Visa and MasterCard. Boppers Holdings closed the acquisition of e Smart Systems (eSmart) through a merger transaction with a subsidiary of Boppers. Under the merger, eSmart became a wholly owned subsidiary of Boppers. eSmart holds an exclusive technology license in China to manufacture and supply proprietary, multi-application Smart Cards. Investments Schlumberger invested US $3 million in ActivCard whose digital identity technology is a strategic component in Schlumberger's Smart Card-based ID solution for physical and network access. Groupe Bull sold its 29.7 per cent holding in Ingenico to a group of investors led by Marc Lassus, founder of Gemplus. The transaction involved a total of 105 million euros. Royal Bank of Scotland invested £4 million in a 39% stake in e-commerce company TrustMarque, and they launched a secure on-line tendering system called TenderTrust based on Smart Card technology. TVG Technologies, of Israel, purchased 49.9% of Embers Distributing Company for $2 million. Embers is building a Smart Card factory for supply primarily to the banking industry. FirstGroup, one of the largest UK bus operators, acquired a 20% interest in Prepayment Cards Limited (PCL) from ERG Limited. PCL is the joint venture company set up by ERG, Stagecoach Holdings and Sema Group UK to provide a Smart Card issuing and clearing system for UK-wide transport operators. Texas Pacific Group, an international private equity firm, agreed to invest between $300 and $500 million in equity into Gemplus which said it would use the new capital to expand its presence in the wireless communications, e-commerce and Internet security markets. New companies Bluefish Technologies, financed by ACG (51% shareholding) and run by four senior ex-ORGA employees, was launched to supply the Smart Card SIM market. Bluefish said it would not manufacture cards but would work with card manufacturers willing to embed Bluefish operating systems and products into their SIM cards. Gemplus launched ThinkPulse to commercialise the smartX software technology introduced by Gemplus last year to provide a unifying application framework for Smart Card development across multiple platforms and operating systems. Company changes Card Services International (CSI) changed its name to CardBASE Technologies on 1 January, 2000, to reflect its focus on its core technology the chip card management product CardBASE. GiroVend Cashless Systems restructured to support business growth. GiroVend's holding company was re-named Transacsys Plc., while the cashless systems business trades as GiroVend Ltd with three separate business units: GiroVend Solutions, Giro-Vend Technologies and GiroVend Manufacturing. PubliCARD brought together its two subsidiaries, Tritheim Technologies and Absec, under the new name Infineer to focus on its Smart Card intellectual property for innovative broadband solutions. Bull created a new subsidiary, Evidian (formerly BullSoft software division of Bull) to deliver secure e-infrastructure management solutions. Alliances CyberMark, supplier of electronic commerce solutions for closed campus environments, formed an alliance with Coin Acceptors to provide a system for electronic cash and a loyalty application with vending machines from Coin Acceptors. Strålfors and Fingerprint Cards teamed on the development of electronic verification of personal identity for Smart Cards, access control and computer log-on using fingerprint technology. Mondex International and FutureTV partnered on electronic cash for personalised television services. Sonera SmartTrust and Gemplus announced that they would market a Gemplus GSM SIM card featuring digital signature and Public Key encryption enabled by Sonera SmartTrust technology. Four leading global Smart Card manufacturers - Gemplus, Giesecke & Devrient, ORGA Kartensysteme and Schlumberger - formed the SIM-alliance to maximise the GSM operator benefits from SIM Card and SIM Application Toolkit usage in the growth of value-added services. CardBASE Technologies and Visa International announced their collaboration in the development of software solutions to enable Visa member banks to issue multi-application chip cards. The system, based on the Common Electronic Purse Specifications (CEPS), will support the Visa Cash electronic purse product. Cubic Transportation Systems and On Track Innovations (OTI) signed a licensing and co-operation agreement under which Cubic would integrate OTI's EYECON Smart Card products with Cubic's Tri-Reader multi-protocol contactless Smart Card reader, the first device capable of processing three contactless Smart Card types. Four members of the MAOSCO Consortium - Dai Nippon Printing Co, Hitachi, Fujitsu and MasterCard International - set up an Association in Japan to promote MULTOS. G&D Security Card Systems and CIT formed an alliance to promote Smart Cards in North America and internationally by jointly developing and marketing end-to-end solutions for the financial and healthcare sectors. Cardis Enterprises International (Cardis) signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Wellington- based EFTPOS New Zealand to commercialise the deployment of Cardis' Ultimus Smart Card-based payment system into the Australian and New Zealand markets. Ultimus enables the extension of the EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) credit and debit card products into micropayment. Cardis also signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Altech Smart Card Technologies to commercialise the deployment of Cardis' Ultimus Smart Card payment system into South Africa and neighbouring territories of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. beenz.com, creator of the Web's currency beenz, and Mondex International agreed to develop a Smart Card capable of carrying Mondex e-cash, beenz and complementary e-commerce services. On Track Innovations (OTI), contactless Smart Card supplier, and Credencial Argentina, a provider of credit cards and a transaction processing network in Argentina, formed a marketing alliance to introduce products based on Credencial's financial platform and OTI's products such as a Smart Card for retail, fuel, financial and health applications utilising the Credencial's network. ICL and Visa USA agreed to develop a software application enabling Visa's Member banks to locally manage the collecting and processing of Visa Cash purchase transactions. Oracle Corporation and Entrust Technologies announced a co-operative agreement to integrate their e-business security technologies to further strengthen Internet, business-to-business and enterprise applications by providing customers with Oracle's highest levels of commercially available data security with out-of-the-box use of Entrust's Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology. CyberSafe Corporation, a provider of network security solutions, and Certicom, specialists in mobile e-business security, agreed to combine Smart Card- based user identity systems with digital signatures. DMR Consulting Group and Gemplus joined forces to offer teleticketing solutions to the mass transit sector in Canada. Welcome Real-time and Bull Smart Cards & Terminals partnered to accelerate EMV (Europay/ MasterCard/Visa) migration by integrating Welcome Real-time's XLS' E4 software with Bull's Smart EMV payment card family. Electronic Identification (EI2) teamed with CPI Card Group and Smart Card Integrators to provide Smart Card identification and security solutions using the EI2 Electronic Passport Access Control Systems (e*PACS) and the EI2 Electronic Personnel Identification and Control Systems (e*PICS) as their platform. Oberthur Card Systems partnered with Philips Digital Networks to develop a secure, flexible and personalised e-wallet service. The e-wallet service is based on Oberthur's AuthentIC card solution which allows a card to be inserted into a dual-slot set-top box with the conditional access card occupying the remaining slot. VeriFone and Landis & Gyr Communications partnered to develop an EMV-compliant solution for the unattended payment market. It was agreed that L&G's CADix card-accepting device would be coupled with VeriFone's EMV software and libraries to enable chip based card payment at unattended payment stations such as parking meters, vending and ticketing machines. Campus Pipeline and CyberMark formed an alliance to combine CyberMark's Smart Card technology with Campus Pipeline's college and university intranets to enable schools to issue ID cards that can be used as secure electronic identification for online campus services. CyberMark also teamed up with USIS America, an Application Service Provider (ASP) of healthcare services, to implement an emergency Smart Card system at colleges and universities. Learn2.com, a provider of e-learning solutions, partnered with Compaq Computer Corporation to offer e-learning to Compaq's customers. The agreement includes a custom library of multimedia content, deliverable over the Internet, that will be distributed on co-branded Learn2.com Smart Cards. Oberthur Card Systems partnered with CS Communication et Systemes to offer a secure end-to-end solution for e-business using OCS's AuthentIC card supported by CS' PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). Cubic Transportation Systems and Australian electronic commerce and Smart Card company, Keycorp, joined forces to deliver payment solutions across Australia's transit and financial services markets. The companies collaborated on a design to introduce ticket sales functionality to the Keycorp terminal with the ticket digitally encoded on contact and contactless Smart Cards. Aether Systems announced that its European venture with Reuters and SILA Communications had signed a worldwide licensing agreement with Gemplus. The agreement called for SILA to incorporate its compression software into a new Gemplus Java-powered SIM card based on a new chip with an initial capacity of 64K bytes to enable users to receive large volumes of data and some broadband services on their hand held devices. Oberthur Card Systems announced a partnership with Entrust Technologies to develop solutions for putting WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) digital certificates onto all Oberthur Smart Card products, including SIM/WIM cards for telecommunications, banking and authentication. On Track Innovations and Touch Technology International, a provider of Smart Card application software, signed a technology alliance bringing together OTI's expertise in contactless microprocessor-based Smart Card products and TTI's back-end settlement expertise. Fingerprint Cards and Litronic agreed to co-operate on developing a new authentication solution combining fingerprint biometrics and Smart Card based digital signatures on the Microsoft Windows Powered Smart Card platform. Two leading names in card production - Oasys Technologies, based in the UK and Gilles Leroux of Orleans in France - joined forces to achieve a complete card production package with Oasys providing equipment for the production of the card body, and Gilles Leroux, the machines for implanting and personalisation of the microchips and finishing processes such as SIM plug in. Bull signed a technological, marketing and shareholding agreement with Cardsoft, a provider of open platform software on small electronic devices, to develop and market portable, compact and secure software for small devices. Joint Ventures ACG (with MicroDatec, Kronegger Informations -systeme and Celectronic) and Utimaco Safeware set up a joint venture in Wiesbaden called Omnikey. Utimaco Safeware manufactures Smart Card-based security solutions, MicroDatec specialises in Smart Card reading systems, Celectronic manufactures chip card terminals while Kronegger Informations-systeme provides contactless writing and reading systems. Leapfrog Smart Products and Chinese IT company Top Group, established a joint venture, China Capital Ventures (CCV), to own and operate www.Chinese.com to utilise the Internet security Smart Card system developed by Leapfrog. The agreement gave Leapfrog 49% of Chinese.com for business-to-business transactions to and from Chinese businesses. Israeli high-tech company SuperCom's subsidiary SuperCom Asia Pacific, established a joint venture with Campus Online, a Web-based educational Application Service Provider (ASP) in Asia Pacific. The joint venture, called Campus Smart, plans to provide a multi-function Smart Card (Campus ID) for schools and universities, initially targeting the Hong Kong educational market. The Campus ID card production will be supported by the joint venture company New Concept Technology, formed by SuperCom Asia Pacific and Shenzhen Mingwah Aohan High Technology Co., the second largest Smart Card manufacturer in China. Toppan Printing Co and Gemplus reported the establishment of a joint venture company called Toppan Gemplus Services Co Ltd to provide card issuance services for the Japanese market. Financing The Pathways Group closed a $2.3 million private placement of 842,200 shares of common stock with a group of private investors organised by Creditanstalt AG of Vienna, Austria. Nanopierce Technologies closed an equity financing of up to four million dollars with Equinox Investors, of New York City, with plans to capture a share of the Smart Card industry. Welcome Real-time announced funding from three new shareholders - Gemplus, Avenir Telecom and Dassault Multimedia - and plans to secure a key role in the electronic and mobile commerce markets. First Access raised $4.7 million from several firms including lead investor Keppel Telecommunications & Transportation. The company planned to use the capital to continue developing wireless Bluetooth technologies. Card production Sun Microsystems shipped more than 20 million Java Card technology-based Smart Cards in 1999 and anticipated strong growth for the year 2000. Bull annnounced plans to open a new Smart Card manufacturing facility on a four-acre site at Fareham, in the south of England. An Annual production capacity as from 2001 was put at 30 million microprocessor cards Schlumberger opened a Smart Card plant in Pinhais, Curitiba, Brazil. The manufacturing plant resulted from an initial investment of US $5 million and was installed in the existing Cardtech facility in which Schlumberger purchased an 80% equity stake in 1999. The plant produces both memory and microprocessor cards. A contactless Smart Card facility is to be set up in Guangdong (China) by New Concept Technology, a joint venture between SuperCom Asia Pacific (51%), a subsidiary of Israeli-based high tech company SuperCom, and Shenzhen Mingwah Aohan High Technology Co. (49%), the second largest Smart Card manufacturer in China. Initial investment in the new company is US $4 million with plans for a production capacity of at least 20 million cards per year. Oberthur Card Systems said it was doubling production at its Rancho Dominguez headquarters in the US to 200,000 cards per day with an investment of around $5 million in new equipment. Half of the 200,000 capacity will be dedicated to memory cards such as prepaid phone cards and half to microprocessor cards such as GSM cards. A new card personalisation facility was opened by Schlumberger at its manufacturing plant in Felixstowe, UK. Chips Hitachi shipped its 100 millionth silicon chip in Europe for its customers manufacturing microprocessor Smart Cards. Infineon's SLE66CX320P chip card controller with 32K bytes EEPROM, 64K bytes ROM and 3K bytes RAM, was certified to level E4 in the ITSEC (Information Technology Security Evaluation Criteria) testing scheme. The company also announced the shipment of its 100 millionth GSM baseband chipset confirming Infineon's position as a leading supplier of standard chip solutions for GSM cellular phones. Motorola shipped its M-Smart Jupiter MJ1000C Smart Card - the first to provide a 32-bit Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) microprocessor and the first to provide a hardware-based Secure Memory Management Unit (SMU) for securely separating multi-applications. On Track Innovations (OTI) announced the Combi- Module - a Smart Card module containing both contact pads and contactless antenna. Hitachi launched its AE-Series (Advanced Engine) of Smart Card chips designed for use in high-end GSM and financial applications. The first chip released was the AE460 with 64K bytes of memory and a 16 bit CPU to enable multi-applications. Atmel Corporation announced plans to reopen the former Siemens microchip plant at Wallsend, North Tyneside, England, in a deal partly financed with a UK Government grant of £27.8 million. The plant closed two years ago with the loss of 1,200 jobs due to a slump in the semiconductor market. Atmel also released the T89SC256C microcontroller with 256K bytes reprogrammable non-volatile memory - the largest embedded flash in secure microcontrollers. Philips Semiconductors develped a second generation of its Smart Card microcontroller SmartXA to power future developments in mobile communications and secure network access. The new 16-bit architecture supports multiple applications and public key cryptography. Smart XA has enhanced memory up to 64K bytes EEPROM, 128K bytes ROM and 5K bytes RAM. Infineon Technologies released the SLF9000N and SLF9611as a complete chip system for contactless chip card applications for public transport, security access and secure RF identification cards. STMicroelectronics unveiled two microcontrollers - the ST19XG34 with 70K bytes of ROM, 2K bytes of RAM and 34K bytes of EEPROM designed primarily for the mobile market; and the ST19XL34, with 94K bytes of ROM, 4K bytes of RAM, 34K bytes of EEPROM aimed at access control, identity and secure transaction markets. Orders ORGA won a £2 million- plus contract to supply up to 8 million Smart Cards to Boots the Chemists and was designated the sole supplier of the Boots Advantage cards for a minimum of three years. Some 12 million Advantage cards have already been issued. Electroglas, a supplier of process management tools for the semiconductor industry, announced a volume purchase agreement valued at $40 million with Atmel Corporation. Under the three-year agreement, Electroglas will supply 4090(mu) wafer probers to several Atmel facilities, including the new fab in Irving, Texas. Atmel will use the machines for testing flash memories and for the testing of very thin die for Smart Cards and other applications. Chip card roll-outs MasterCard International began to migrate its entire card base in Brazil from magnetic stripe to chip technology. The Brazilian banks are introducing MasterCard-branded Smart Cards using the MasterCard M/Chip credit/debit application based on the EMV standard. In Italy, the banks are planning to launch a nationwide Smart Card payment system. Gemplus has been chosen by the Associazione Progetto Microcircuito, an initiative promoted by ABI - Associazione Bancaria Italiana - to be one of the official partners in the Smart Card project. The scheme involves updating every payment card in the Italian banking system, as well as all terminals and communications software, to comply with EMV (Europay/Master Card/Visa) specifications. Gemplus will develop and supply Smart Card technology for which Progetto Microcircuito specified the use of 8K byte Smart Cards. Electronic Purses Banco Nacional de Mexico, Bancomer and Banco Internacional, the three largest credit card issuers in Mexico, purchased exclusive franchise rights to develop Mondex electronic cash in Mexico. Mondex International announced that the Japan Mondex Consortium (MXJ) and Hitachi were rolling out thousands of MULTOS cards in the new Hitachi Employee ID Card System, including electronic cash, marking the first large-scale deployment of Mondex cards in Japan. A group of Nigerian banks, representing more than 90% of the country's banking system, began rolling out a common electronic purse, called ValueCard, through Smartcard Nigeria. The software was provided by CardBase Technologies, and Gemplus supplied the Smart Cards. Other suppliers included DataCard, VeriFone and Ascom Monetel. A transaction with a Proton-based Smart Card at the Ikoyi Club in Lagos, launched the first pilot by Securecard Trust Company (STC), the Proton licensee for Nigeria. Cards containing an electronic purse, membership details and a security access pass were issued to all 15,000 members of the sports and social club. Mondex Ghana, a new venture company set up by Ghana Commercial Bank and the Agricultural Development Bank, selected Hitachi Europe to help exploit the Mondex electronic cash franchise, and announced plans to introduce Mondex in phases, bringing banking to over 18 million Ghanaians. Contactless Smart Cards Last year saw contactless Smart Card technology employed in major transport projects around the world. China forged ahead with the introduction of contactless Smart Card automatic payment for its tollways. Chongqing city began using the one-card multi-application Smart Card payment system developed by Sydney, Australia-based VFJ Technology (VFJ), a subsidiary of Omnitech Holdings. A similar project is underway on the highway system in the Chinese capital, Beijing, while six major tollway projects utilising the VFJ Technology system were already in operation in the Guangxi, Yunan, Guangdong and Shanxi provinces. Almex, a UK company, won a contract to install an Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) system for three country bus companies in Sweden. The project, using MIFARE contactless Smart Card technology, involves equipping over 1,000 buses and suppling Smartfare card handling units and Smart Cards. Cubic Transportation Systems installed the first fully integrated contactless Smart Card fare collection system for mass transit in Freiburg, Germany. Motorola, through its Huamin Beijing Smartcard System joint venture, was awarded two contracts in China - one for an AFC system from Lanzhou Public Transit Co., in the city of Lanzhou, in Northern China, and using Motorola M-Smart Mercury contactless fare cards; and the other from Changde Public Transit Co for a multi-application Smart Card system in Changde. Plans called for this system to start as an AFC system and then grow into a payment method for public utilities, water, gasoline and taxi services. The Paris public transport authority (RATP) awarded a contract to Ascom Monétel to introduce contactless ticketing equipment at access control gates on all its stations. Around 2,000 gate controllers will be modified in the first half of 2001 to accept existing magnetic stripe tickets as well as the latest contactless Smart Cards. Ascom also won a contract to supply a new ticketing system for the bus fleet in the French city of Metz, including 25,000 GTM Light contactless Smart Cards designed specifically for public transport. Schlumberger was selected to implement an upgradeable contactless Smart Card ticketing solution in the Paris region for the SNCF (French Railways) and RATP (Paris Transport) for access to all the networks (bus, metro, suburban trains). The deal includes the staggered supply of cards. The first passengers to use the new card by the end of 2001 will be the 170,000 holders of the "Carte Intégrale" which is the annual pass for travel on the Ile de France network. Wilson Parking and Creative Star entered into an agreement to accept Hong Kong's Octopus transit Smart Card to pay for parking at about 200 car parks. Total investment in the programme is $60 million. The car park access control equipment is being manufactured by SkiData of Austria for distribution in Hong Kong through SkiData Parking Systems. Philips Semiconductors' MIFARE PRO dual interface ICs are being used in a major multi- application Smart Card project in Pusan, Korea. The Digital Pusan Card supports both contact and contactless applications. The card's contactless interface can be used in transport payment applications including buses, taxis and subway systems, as well as tollgates and car parks within the existing MIFARE-based Hanaro Transportation system. The card can also be used for payment in shops, e-commerce, ticket reservations and a range of municipal services. Developed by Korea Electronic Banking Technology, the Digital Pusan Card was launched in September, 2000 with an initial roll-out of one million dual interface cards. In the USA there are major contactless card projects in the cities of Chicago and Washington. Commuters in Chicago are the first in the US to travel throughout their city and suburbs using an intermodal (train and bus), multi-agency contactless Smart Card with the roll-out of the Chicago Transit Authority's (CTA) scheme developed by Cubic Transportation Systems. The cards are available for use on more than 1,800 buses and at 143 rail stations. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which, like Chicago, uses the Cubic Go Card, provides access to trains and parking facilities in the Washington, DC area. In the UK, London Transport's Prestige project for a contactless Smart Card ticketing and revenue collection system is scheduled to be introduced in 2002. TranSys - the consortium formed by Cubic Transportation Systems, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), ICL and WS Atkins - was awarded the £1 billion contract. The consortium announced its specification and issued invitations to tender to leading Smart Card manufacturers around the world, installed gates at most of the Underground stations and began to introduce Q-Busters ticket purchasing technology at Underground stations. Biometrics French Groupe SAGEM introduced a dual-band GSM phone with an integrated fingerprint reader. Called the SAGEM MC 959 ID GSM terminal, it uses fingerprint recognition to replace the PIN code to customise the phone and prevent fraudulent use if lost or stolen. Datastrip introduced DSVERIFY a handheld terminal that can handle fingerprint recognition, barcodes, Smart Cards and other portable storage mechanisms to support high security ID schemes. Proton World announced that its electronic purse Smart Cards can now be equipped with Keyware Technologies' layered biometric verification, enabling users to store bio prints such as fingerprints, face, voice etc on their cards. Keyware Technologies, supported by Microsoft, agreed to develop tools to enable biometric authentication on Microsoft's Windows for Smart Cards operating system. Keyware Technologies joined with systems integrator Interstrat to embed its biometric technology into Smart Cards that will be used by 15 nightclubs in The Netherlands to identify patrons who have previously created problems in the clubs. Patrons will receive a biometric membership card carrying their face and finger bio prints. Veridicom, a provider of silicon-based fingerprint authentication solutions, and German Smart Card manufacturer Giesecke & Devrient, partnered to create secure Smart Card products using Veridicom's Match-on-Card fingerprint technology to unlock the card and provide access to an enrolled user. Veridicom signed a similar agreement with French Smart Card manufacturer Gemplus. iD2 Technologies, a developer of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) solutions to identity users across the Internet, partnered with Precise Biometrics and Miotec to offer biometric Smart Cards. Precise Biometrics is contributing its fingerprint matching systems and integrated Smart Card and fingerprint reader, Miotec is using its advanced Smart Card operating system and card while iD2 is providing end users with software to support Smart Cards and encryption and create digital signatures. Computer keyboard specialist, Cherry Electrical Products, and Informer Systems Limited (ISL), jointly developed a Smart biometric keyboard for applications such as workstation logon, network logon and remote access. The keyboard, manufactured by Cherry, features a built-in Smart Card reader and a fingerprint scanner using ISL's Sentri-NET fingerprint authentication software program. Standards SPYRUS' Rosetta Smart Card became the first to receive Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Pub 140-1 Level 2 certification from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Rosetta Smart Card uses the SLE66CX160S 16K bytes EEPROM chip card cryptocontroller from Infineon Technologies. SafeNet announced its support for the new Rijndael algorithm, selected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to replace the ageing DES encryption formula (Data Encryption Standard). The Rijndael algorithm, which emerged the winner of a three-year, worldwide competition to develop a new encryption standard will be proposed formally for incorporation into the new Draft Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) and is expected to become an official government standard in the spring of 2001. Projects Probably the most important contracts during the year were awarded by the US General Service Administration (GSA) for a government-wide Smart Access Common ID project valued at over $1.5 billion over ten years. Five prime contractors were appointed - KPMC Consulting; PRC, Inc.; Electronic Data Systems; 3-G International; and Logicon. (Most of the assets of the Government Services Division of 3GI were purchased by MAXIMUS, and the contract was later modified to name MAXIMUS as the successor.) The companies will provide microchip-equipped cards capable of uses such as personal identification, building access, computer and network access, and digital signatures. Already many Smart Card and biometric companies around the world are involved in the contracts. The City of Southampton in the south of England was selected to pilot the SmartCities Smart Card co-funded by the European Commission and nine partners - Schlumberger, Southampton City Council, Europay International, Motorola, University of Southampton, IT Innovation, Technolution, CRID (The Centre for Research on Computers and Law) at the University of Namur, Belgium; the City of Göteborg, Sweden. The project, which will run until November 2002, will use Smart Cards for transportation, entertainment, education and other services, and provide a model for other European cities. Jordan began rolling-out a Smart Card-based medical records project that automates patients' medical and insurance information. The scheme, by the National Health Insurance Administration Company of Jordan, launched in the capital of Amman with M.O.S.T Smart Cards from CardLogix, PC Pay readers from Innovonics, and eClaim software from IdealSoft. 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