What makes me so optimistic is that we have seen a trend the last 12 months … large North American and Asian corporations are evaluating contactless smart cards with an eye towards moving away from low frequency technologies. While the adoption of 13.56 MHZ systems has been quick in Asia, its use has largely been limited to simple single applications using the card UID and a simple reader.

In essence, most projects were simply replacing the 125 kHz prox technology with a higher frequency (13.56 MHZ) that offered an improvement in security and laid the foundations for a true multi-application all-in-one-card.

In reality though, most implementations offered only a marginal improvement in security and long-term investment security. In North America, we are seeing a growing interest in contactless smart cards driven by FIPS201 on one hand, but also by the realization that the costs to issue and maintain multiple credentials are enormous and can be reduced by having everything on one card.

Also the global e-passport infrastructure projects and NFC (near field communication) pilot projects will serve as a means to educate the general public about contactless technologies and how they can be used in daily transactions.

I believe that another trend, e-payment, will continue to make headway in both the public domain (e.g. EMV, paypass) and in the closed domain (e.g. cashless vending in corporate or campus environments). We have seen this trend in Europe now for more then 10 years and we believe that with a growing global economy in 2006 it will allow many companies to warrant the investment and move towards cashless payment infrastructures.

What I think will make a big difference is that small and medium size businesses world-wide can now afford and make use of contactless smart card technology, which in many parts of the world has been limited to large corporations or public infrastructure projects. These small and mid-cap companies will account for a large growth in contactless smart card business as a whole next year.

Because many published growth figures have proven to be wrong in the past, it can be argued that prognosis is impossible. However, even seemingly mature markets, such as those in Europe, still have shown constant double-digit growth for LEGIC in the past years. Thus, I am very confident that the new application possibilities will ensure very solid worldwide growth for the industry as a whole.

Visit LEGIC on the web at www.legic.com.

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