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Smart cards are becoming more widely used due to the many advantages they have over their magnetic stripe counterparts such as price, security and processing power. Smart cards can come in various sizes from those as big as a credit card or even as small as mobile phone prepaid cards. They also come with various functionalities so here is a brief guide to the most common types of smart card on the market.

Microprocessor based smart cards have significantly more storage space than cards which don’t have a microprocessor and the security of the data on these smart cards is also much great than any other storage device. The various microprocessor based smart cards that are available today have an 8-bit microprocessor and 512 bytes of RAM as well as 16kb of ROM. In addition, some of these smart cards also make use of cryptography in order to secure someone’s digital identity. Each of these cards has it’s own operating system which manages the data on the card and makes it possible for them to be multi-functional.

Memory based smart cards tend to be utilised for applications where the function of the card is fixed. These types of smart cards require a smart card reader in order to manipulate the data stored on the card. These types of card communicate with the card reader using some synchronous protocols. Since there is no microprocessor chip on the card there is no processing power and no ability to manage the data stored on them. Memory based cards tend to be used for prepaid phone cards.

Smart cards are also classified in terms of the way that data is read and written to them. Cards can be classified as the following:

Contact based smart cards – These are so named as they have to come in contact with the card reader. Contact smart cards are the size of a credit card and have an embedded microprocessor and memory. These cards tend to be widely used for network security, electronic cash and access control.

Contactless smart cards – As the name would suggest these cards don’t come into direct contact with the card. Instead they have an antenna built into the card which is used to communicate with the card reader in order to read and write data to the card. Applications fof contactless smart cards include parking cards, student ID and electronic passports.

Combi smart cards – These smart cards are a combination of contactless and contact cards in that they can be read with or without contact from the card reader. These cards are used for purposes such as vending passes, access control and network security.

Proximity cards – This type of smart card is also contacatless and makes use of an embedded antenna. The difference with proximity cards is that they are read-only and the data stored on them cannot be manipulated. Theses types of cards are mainly used for security and access control.

Hybrid cards – These are the only type of smart cards which have more than two technologies embedded inside one card. They make use of any two of the aforementioned technologies on one chip as many applications require dual functionality.

Dave Matthews is writing on behalf of Universal Smart Cards.