„Cartes & IDentification 2008“

Despite all the talk of global financial crisis, developers of payment and other smart cards are sure of a bright future in the market. This was borne out by a survey of participants at the international exhibition Cartes & IDentification 2008, which took place in Paris.

Over 500 companies from all over the world participated in the most important exhibition of smart cards and recognition solutions in the world; over 20,000 specialists in this field and guests visited it.

Besides presentations of new technologies, a fair of products and solutions and a congress, in which issues concerning contactless payments, convergence of technologies, secure data transfer, etc., were discussed, was held in the exhibition.

Representatives of 163 companies, which participated in the event, were surveyed before the exhibition and it turned out that one third of them have a positive assessment of the development of the IT market and especially the sector of security control of IP systems.

Ninety percent of the people surveyed think that the situation will only improve in the future and 79 percent of the respondents have purchased or invested in projects related to recognition technologies. The priorities of this field are digital recognition and biometry.

The question of what changes will rock the market in the very near future was usually answered in this way: biometric “explosion”, development of recognition solutions and contactless technologies, including the method of recognition using RFID signals.

Contactless technologies are becoming fashion accessories

Technologies are also fashionable in the world capital of fashion. Accessories presented in the exhibition Cartes & IDentification 2008 are “crammed” with contactless technologies. For example, the largest Austrian manufacturer of watches presented a watch with a SIM card and an applicable program integrated in it; the program is designed for the contactless payments system PayPass. The company MasterCard also had something to boast about – it created and presented bracelets for soccer fans; these bracelets may be used for paying for entrance to the games which take place in New York’s Giants stadium.

By the way, participants of the Democratic National Convention in America were among the first to try contactless IT “stickers” in Denver in the end of August. The “sticker” allowed payment for dinner or other services available in the event. This Go-Tag technology can turn any household item into a means of payment once a contactless chip is integrated into it.

Thus we may conclude that contactless technologies may easily replace such usual everyday phenomena as payment, system of purchase, sales of tickets, etc. To be more accurate, all the functions remain and only the form has changed: mini payment cards, key holders, bracelets and watches are being created. Contactless chips are also used in an integrated biometric passport which is active in the world.

Instant transactions

The most up-to-date transaction solutions were also presented in the exhibition Cartes & Identification 2008. The largest operator of e-transactions (over 3.5 billion transactions carried out in 2007) SWIFT has recently started to use a new server which provides the possibility to access the SWIFTnet network and its resources (payments, management of cash flows, commercial transactions, etc). Such access to the resources is achieved using an ordinary USB key which functions as a smart card.

Speaking of the new payment system Faster Payment in Great Britain, it enables customers to carry out banking operations online instantly. The advantage of this service is the fact that money can be transferred from any place of the world (one must access the network) in a few seconds, even though earlier such transactions took about 6 days.

On-demand services from Lithuania in the exhibition

Penki kontinentai, the group of companies from Lithuania, or to be precise, the companies BS/2 and Ashburn International, also presented their solutions in Paris.

According to Žanas Ratomskis, BS/2’s Information Technologies manager, visitors were most interested by on-demand services solutions. BS/2 offers such services as surveillance, remote control, sales and introduction of hardware, transactions, etc. “Customers were most interested by on-demand services and, taking account of the broad experience of our company accumulated through working in 63 foreign countries as well as the scope of the services we provide (payment cards, banking technologies, communication), we really have something to talk about,” said Ž. Ratomskis.

Meeting with the partners of the group of companies – Compass Plus, TietoEnator, BPC, First Data, etc. – also took place at the event.

Laimonas Lileika, representative of the company Ashburn International, organized several presentations of integrated solutions designed for authorization of payment cards at their exhibition stand. In addition, Penki kontinentai introduced the opportunities provided by electronic commerce via interactive IP television.