Contact & Contactless Smart Card

Contact Smart Card

Contact Smart Cards have a small gold chip about ½ inch in diameter on the front. When inserted into a reader, the chip makes contact with electrical connectors that can read information from the chip and write information back.

The ISO/IEC 7816 and ISO/IEC 7810 series of standards define:

The cards do not contain batteries; energy is supplied by the card reader.

Contact Smart Card Reader

Contact smart card readers are used as a communications medium between the smart card and a host, e.g. a computer.

Contactless Smart Card

A second type is the contactless smart card, in which the chip communicates with the card reader through RFID induction technology (at data rates of 106 to 848 kbit/s). These cards require only close proximity to an antenna to complete transaction. They are often used when transactions must be processed quickly or hands-free, such as on mass transit systems, where smart cards can be used without even removing them from a wallet.

The standard for contactless smart card communications is ISO/IEC 14443, dated 2001. It defines two types of contactless cards ("A" and "B"), allows for communications at distances up to 10 cm. There have been proposals for ISO 14443 types C, D, E and F that have yet to complete the standards process. An alternative standard for contactless smart cards is ISO 15693, which allows communications at distances up to 50 cm.

An example of a widely used contactless smart card is Hong Kong's Octopus card, which predates the ISO/IEC 14443 standard.

A related contactless technology is RFID (radio frequency identification). In certain cases, it can be used for applications similar to those of contactless smart cards, such as for electronic toll collection. RFID’s usually do not include writeable memory or microcontroller processing capability as contactless smart cards often do.

There are dual-interface cards that implement contactless and contact interfaces on a single card with some shared storage and processing. An example is Malaysia's multi-application identification card, called MyKad, that uses both contact Proton and contactless MIFARE (ISO 14443A) chips.

Like smart cards with contacts, contactless cards do not have a battery. Instead, they use a built-in inductor to capture some of the incident radio-frequency interrogation signal, rectify it, and use it to power the card's electronics.