One extremely prevalent example of such fraud is ATM skimming. Skimming occurs when a criminal copies the data stored on your card’s magnetic stripe and burns the stolen data onto a blank card, creating a clone can that be used like any normal credit or debit card.

According to the Smart Card Alliance, twenty-two countries, including China, India, Japan, Mexico, Canada, and many in Western Europe and Latin America, are migrating to encrypted microprocessor chip and PIN technology for credit and debit payments. These new “smart cards” contain an embedded microchip and are authenticated using a personal identification number, or PIN. When a customer uses a smart card to make a purchase, the card is placed into a “PIN pad” terminal or a modified swipe-card reader, which accesses the card’s microchip and verifies the card’s authenticity. The customer then enters a four digit PIN, which is checked against the PIN stored on the card.

U.S. travelers are encountering difficulties when attempting to use old magnetic stripe credit and debit cards abroad, since their cards do not contain the new microchips. This is especially problematic at automated kiosks, which are common in Europe. Vending machines at regional rail stations, bicycle rental racks in Paris, parking meters in parts of London, toll roads, and gas stations only accept chip and PIN cards. Visa claims that most payment terminals in countries that have adopted chip payment technology can still process old magnetic stripe U.S. cards, and, “in the rare instance that a card holder encounters a problem” at a self-service machine, Visa advises American travelers to present their cards to attendants.

In the meantime, if you travel to Europe, make sure to carry cash. And if you are likely to use a kiosk that can only process cards with chip and PIN technology, do your homework ahead of time to determine whether an alternative payment method is available.

l              Contact smart card

Contact smart cards have a contact area of approximately 1 square centimetre (0.16 sq in), comprising several gold-plated contact pads. These pad provide electrical connectivity when inserted into a reader.

Cards do not contain batteries; energy is supplied by the card reader.

Signals

l              VCC 

Power supply input.

l              RST 

Reset signal, used to reset the card’s communications.

l              CLK 

Provides the card with a clock signal, from which data communications timing is derived.

l              GND 

Ground (reference voltage).

l              VPP 

Programming voltage input – originally an input for a higher voltage to program persistent memory (e.g. EEPROM, but now deprecated.

l              I/O 

Serial input and output (half-duplex).

l              C4, C8 

The two remaining contacts are AUX1 and AUX2 respectively, and used for USB interfaces and other uses.

 Reader

Contact smart card readers are used as a communications medium between the smart card and a host, e.g. a computer, a point of sale terminal, or a mobile telephone.

Because the chips in financial cards are the same Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) as in mobile phones, programmed differently and embedded in a different piece of PVC, chip manufacturers are building to the more demanding GSM/3G standards. So, for example, although EMV allows a chip card to draw 50 mA from its terminal, cards are normally well below the telephone industry’s 6 mA limit. This allows smaller and cheaper financial card terminals.

l              Contactless smart card

A second card type is the contactless smart card, in which the card communicates with and is powered by the reader through RF induction technology (at data rates of 106 to 848 kilobits/second). These cards require only proximity to an antenna to communicate. They are often used for quick or hands-free transactions such as paying a mass transit without removing the card from a wallet.

Examples of widely used contactless smart cards are Hong Kong’s Octopus card, Shanghai’s Public Transportation Card, Moscow’s Transport/Social Card, South Korea’s T-money (bus, subway, taxi), Melbourne’s myki, the Netherlands’ OV-chipkaart, Milan’s Itinero, London’s Oyster card, London’s sQuidcard which is used for small payments in Thames Ditton, Bolton and Dundee, Japan Rail’s Suica card, Israel’s Rav-Kav, Mumbai’s Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport and Beijing’s Municipal Administration and Communications Card. All of them are primarily designed for public transportation payment and other electronic purse applications.

Like smart cards with contacts, contactless cards do not have a battery. Instead, they use a built-in inductor to capture some of the incident radio-frequency interrogation signal, rectify it, and use it to power the card’s electronics.

Telephone Cards

Smart cards have brought us not only convenience, all kinds of smart cards have make our life happier. You may feel surprise, But it is true.

Don’t tell me you have none of cards, everyone must use cards during working, shopping, transportation, telecom service and so on. Without smart cards, our lives aren’t compete.

Today, I don’t have mood to tell you how smart cards improve our daily lives. Let me tell you why smart cards make our life happier. That’s it.

News from One World South Asia: A smart card launched by the government of India provides quality health facilities to people in rural areas, who lack access to basic healthcare. The cashless scheme offers more choices to the poor and saves them from falling prey to corrupt practices of officials.

A man has received a card.

The RSBY is a scheme with many firsts to its credit. It is arguably one of the largest mass health insurance programmes in the world. It effectively addresses the health concerns of those in the BPL category and also the poor, unorganised workers.

The RSBY provides a health insurance amounting to Rs 30,000 per year to five members of every BPL family. This is done through smart cards, which, with a unique fingerprint identification system, make them practically foolproof.

Along with National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), loan waiver scheme and scholarships to Muslims, the rural health insurance scheme helped the Congress reap rich dividends in the general elections. Spurred by its success, the government is extending the cover to social and economic segments, too.

Credit Cards

The brain behind the RSBY is Anil Swarup, director-general, labour welfare in the ministry of labour and employment. Swarup said that the major reason behind distress in the farm sector is absence of a healthcare system to treat illnesses that affect the people often. The scheme was meant to fix this problem.

“We plan to expand this scheme to 600 districts across India in future and make healthcare accessible to all. A unique feature of the scheme is that it is cashless and this was initiated to root out corruption at the grassroots level. In the RSBY, if Rs 100 is allotted to a person, he gets the entire amount. This is where the efficacy of the scheme lies,” he remarked.

The simplicity of providing insurance has been noticed in the US too. A report in the Wall Street Journal elicited a response from the new Obama administration, which is trying to find a way to fulfill an electoral promise to give quality healthcare to its marginalised poor