logy card featured a standard integrated circuit (IC) chip on one side of the card and more than one megabyte of read/write optical data storage on the other side ù all within the standard credit card size ("Drexler Technology Unveils Multi-function Chip/Optical Smart Card as Paris Card Technology Show," 1994).
The chip/optical smart card provides the data memory capacity, versatility, and upgradability that transaction-function that earlier IC chip cards lacked. When a consumer-transaction card system is to have a long operational life, the design needs to be adaptable to changing consumer needs and marketing objectives. By including an inexpensive read/write optical memory stripe in the design, it is possible to add a number of functions as demanded by market needs. The use of an optical memory stripe plus a small memory chip instead of an expensive, larger memory chip minimizes the cost of the card ("Drexler Technology Unveils Multi-function Chip/Optical Smart Card as Paris Card Technology Show," 1994).
A small wireless device referred to as a wallet (an electronic tracker) can transfer money from one card to another ù from shopper to merchant or between individuals. Each Mondex customer receives gets small reader that displays balances (bank account and smart card) or a transaction log (Woods, 1995).
In 1995, in Swindon, England, approximately 40,000 banking customers began using Mondex cards, which resemble in appearance the more familiar ATM (automatic teller machine) cards, but which have built-in sophisticated computer chips. The chips contain real, but electronic, money in the form of data. Customers with actual money in their bank accounts can get the electronic money transferred onto their cards by telephone. British Telecommunications equipped 2,000 households with smart phones, augmented by 70-to-80 public pay phones. The phones can convey data from the Mondex cards to other such smart cards and to or fro...