[Karty] Kolejna implementacja jednej karty do wszystkiego

[Lukasz Kowalczyk]

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,62545,00.html

Chameleon Network, in Concord, Massachusetts, plans to replace the
stacks of credit, bank and customer-loyalty cards burdening modern
consumers with a single, rewritable Chameleon Card, which works just
like an ordinary card with a magnetic strip.

The Chameleon Card's black strip covers a programmable transducer that
mimics the information on the magnetic strips of the cards it is
replacing. A new handheld device from Chameleon, the Pocket Vault,
programs the Chameleon Card to take the place of any credit card the
consumer chooses for a transaction.

Shoppers will be able to swipe their Chameleon Cards through the same
magnetic readers used in stores and banks today. And instead of
reading bar codes off the back of customer-loyalty cards, retail
bar-code readers will scan the bar code displayed on the Pocket Vault
itself.

The Pocket Vault has a slot for the Chameleon Card, but has no buttons
or stylus. The device, which will be about half the size of an iPaq
pocket PC, will be on sale in stores such as Best Buy and Circuit City
as early as January 2005, according to Chameleon CEO Todd Burger.

First-time users of the Pocket Vault will read their old credit cards
with the device, which stores their information internally and backs
it up to an online or local database in case the Pocket Vault is lost
or stolen. Each credit card stored on the Pocket Vault is then
represented by an icon on the device's touch-screen display.

The Pocket Vault also prompts its owners to place their fingerprints
on the device's reader pad to create a biometric profile.

To use the Chameleon Card for a credit card transaction, a shopper
taps the logo on the Pocket Vault's display representing the credit
card account he wants to use. Seconds later, the Pocket Vault spits
out the shopper's Chameleon Card, with the selected credit card
account number, expiration date and logo imprinted on its flexible
display, and its transducer reconfigured to work in the store's or
bank's magnetic card reader.

The Pocket Vault, which Burger expects to sell for less than $200,
will also replace ExxonMobil's Speedpass and similar radio-frequency
identification applications with its own, built-in RFID chips.

But the Pocket Vault promises to do more than prevent slipped discs
caused by overstuffed wallets. Its security features should also help
safeguard shoppers from the devastation of credit card fraud and
identity theft, said Burger.

The Pocket Vault will only power up when it detects its owner's
fingerprint. And unlike an ordinary credit card, the information
stored on a Chameleon Card becomes unreadable (and the transducer
inoperable) within 10 minutes.

The Pocket Vault also switches off shortly after ejecting a Chameleon
Card.

That's plenty of time for a shopper to swipe his Chameleon Card
through a magnetic reader at the grocery store, but hardly enough for
a thief to do much damage to the shopper's credit.

"Your worst possible exposure," said Burger, "is that a thief may be
able to get in one illegal purchase in the 10 minutes after the card
is ejected from the (Pocket Vault)."

Major credit companies, banks and other financial institutions are
just weeks away from signing an agreement with Chameleon, said Burger.

Chameleon has built most of the components of the Pocket Vault system,
and it has successfully tested its replacement for the Speedpass.

But an analyst warned that, although the Pocket Vault and Chameleon
Card may be easy to use, consumers are typically reluctant to change
their buying behaviors.

They may also balk at the Pocket Vault's strongest security feature,
its use of fingerprint authentication.

"Consumers still associate biometrics with an invasion of their
privacy," said Forrester Research analyst Penny Gillespie. "For better
or worse, they see it as intrusive."

-- 
Łukasz Kowalczyk