Smart cards or IC cards offer a huge potential for information processing purposes. The portability and processing power of IC cards allow for highly secure conditional access and reliable distributed information processing. IC cards that can perform highly sophisticated cryptographic computations are already available. Their application in the financial services and telecom industries are well known. But the potential of IC cards go well beyond that. Their applicability in mainstream Information Technology and the Networked Economy is limited mainly by our imagination; the information...

Smart cards or IC cards offer a huge potential for information processing purposes. The portability and processing power of IC cards allow for highly secure conditional access and reliable distributed information processing. IC cards that can perform highly sophisticated cryptographic computations are already available. Their application in the financial services and telecom industries are well known. But the potential of IC cards go well beyond that. Their applicability in mainstream Information Technology and the Networked Economy is limited mainly by our imagination; the information...