from http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/issues/1617/pcmg0002.htm:

PC Magazine -- October 7, 1997

Collegiate Smart Cards

To most people, the notion of a cashless society is just hype. But across a handful of college campuses, students are using microchip-based smart cards for everything from making phone calls to doing laundry.

Smart cards are nothing new. First introduced over a decade ago in France, the cards have embedded microchips that store value and are accepted by any business that has a smart-card reader--a small, inexpensive, self-contained device.

The cards are likely to catch on first around corporations and other "closed" systems such as college campuses, says Dan Amdur of the market research firm Yankee Group. Students at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the University of Florida are getting an early glimpse of cashless living.

On arrival this fall, each Penn student received a "smart" ID card with a digital photo, a mag-stripe that enables the card to function as an ATM card, and an embedded microchip that stores up to $50 in a PennCash account.

On a typical day, a Penn student on his way to class uses his PennCash account to pick up coffee at a local stand. After the class, he uses the PennCard as a photocopy card. Next he swings by the ATM and transfers money from his checking account to his PennCard. When he swipes his PennCard for lunch, the meal is automatically charged to his dining bill. And after catching another class, he uses the PennCard to call Mom and Dad from a corner pay phone. Returning to his dorm room, he swipes the card to enter the building.

Later this year Citibank--in conjunction with Chase Manhattan Bank, MasterCard, and Visa--will bring smart cards to Manhattan's Upper West Side to try them out in the unforgiving New York City market.

College students test out the cashless society.


Copyright (c) 1997 Ziff-Davis Inc.


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