Two of the world's biggest smartcard makers threw their collective weight behind the Java Card Application Program Interface on Thursday as Gemplus and Schlumberger created a working group dedicated to turning the distributed programming language into an electronic commerce standard.
Besides allowing members to share information, the Java Card Forum might prove to be helpful in the US effort to catch up to Europe in the smartcard arena, said Dave Spenhoff, director of product marketing for San Jose-based JavaSoft.
Up to now, smartcards have barely made an appearance in the United States, and their application in Europe has been mostly in the realm of telephone cards and banking. A dearth of standards - whether in hardware or software - has proven to be the sticking point.
Smartcards from different vendors use different chips, resulting in a myriad of incompatibilities. Likewise, the electronic readers that conduct the transactions also vary depending upon the developer. The result is that a card from one vendor may not be compatible with the reader from another.
In addition, one vendor's card may be limited in the types of applications it can support. For example, a card from Bank A may support debiting functions only, while a card from Bank B may support debiting and telecommunications. The first card may be limited in that its chip doesn't support calling-card functions.
The platform-independent Java applications will, it is hoped, address this compatibility problem, opening the door to demand. Vendors and bankers will no longer have to worry about accommodating the different cards - Java will do it for them, Spenhoff said.
"[A Java standard] increases the flexibility for applications. These have been specialized to the max," said Spenhoff.
