GlobalPlatform to deliver universal standard for smart card

BANGALORE: A consortium of major companies from payments and telecom sectors, lead by Visa International, have come together to form a new entity to promote a global infrastructure for the implementation of smart cards across multiple industries. Named GlobalPlatform Inc., the new company will deliver one universal smart card standard and infrastructure for all industries and reduce the barriers in cross-industry, multi-application smart cards, according to a release here.

The Open Platform card specifications and terminal framework developed by Visa International had been transferred to GlobalPlatform to further develop, manage and promote the Open Platform specifications to ensure that card issuers have access to wide choice of card technologies with common back-end systems for application loading and management.

Some of the initial members in multi-application smart cards are Sun Microsystems, Motorola, Nokia, Microsoft. Additional organizations in the telecommunications and transport industries, travel and entertainment, media, retail and government sectors are expected to join before the inaugural meeting of the Board of Directors planned for November 1999.

A cross-industry board comprised of up to 11 directors who will lead the work activities of various committees will drive GlobalPlatform. Through the efforts of these committees the organization will develop conventions needed to facilitate card issuance, card management, application deployment, card acceptance devices and post-issuance loading. This is intended to result in secure back-end systems for all industries, making it cost effective and easy for a card issuer to offer a variety of functions on one card.