Plastic Smart Cards

A smart card is a standard credit card-sized plastic card within which a microchip has been embedded. This chip is the engine room of the plastic smart card, and indeed is what makes it 'smart'.

Smart card chips come in two broad varieties: memory-only chips, with storage space for data, and with a reasonable level of built-in security; and microprocessor chips which, in addition to memory, embody a processor controlled by a card operating syste, with the ability to process data onboard, as well as carrying small programs capable of local interaction.

The main storage area in such plastic cards is normally EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory), which can have its content updated, and which retains current contents when external power is removed.

Newer smart card chips may also have maths co-processors integrated into the microprocessor chip, able to perform quite complex encryption routines relatively quickly.

The smart card is therefore uniquely different by its chip, with its ability to store much more data (currently up to about 32,000 bytes) than is held on a magnetic stripe, all within an extremely secure environment, and with the added design variability of plastic card production.

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