In the race to deliver on the promise of smartcards, developers need to be adept at more than burning applications into a silicon chip - they must also provide a consistent interface to read and secure transactions. On Friday, Motorola announced a new smartcard division that will develop all facets of smartcard technology including readers, software applications, and encryption technologies.
The new Smartcard Systems Business will get right to work on the Schaumburg, Illinois-based division's first two applications of choice - stored value functions, such as ATM transactions, and transit fares, said Motorola's John Hines.
The division will ensure that issues such as security be made consistent across a smartcard system. At an ATM, for example, a smartcard, the reader, and other banking terminals would all be based on the same encryption scheme - DES or RSA, the two methods Motorola will employ. Card readers will take one of two forms - a radio-frequency reader for short (10 centimeter) distances and an embedded terminal to read an inserted card.
Software development and a standard interface are still up for discussion, Hines said, revealing that Java is one platform under consideration (JavaSoft recently announced a smartcard API). Whatever the choice, Motorola's hardware will need to allow smartcard holders to add or subtract applications as they see fit. For example, a company might want to give employees with smartcards the option of adding a passkey function to their cards to enter buildings or log onto computer systems.
"With [platform-independent] technologies, you don't need to know the registers of the chip. You just write an application and it can run," said Hines, adding that Motorola will develop application programming interfaces for both readers and cards along with software toolkits for both to enable this flexibility.
The ability to add and subtract functions from a smartcard are likely to add to their practical appeal, said Melissa Abernathy, spokeswoman for the American Express Center for Smartcard Excellence. As part of a project with American Airlines, the venerable travel-card vendor is developing chips for its corporate cards with built-in frequent-flyer mileage and passenger check-in functions
Motorola said it hopes to ship its cards and systems by the end of the year.
