(Asia) – The region is the fastest growing smart card market in the world, with many innovative smart card applications under deployment according to the Asia Pacific Smart Card Association (APSCA).Organisations in this part of the world are also adopting multi-application smart cards, at the higher end of the technology spectrum, a reflection, according to APSCA, of both public and private sectors being much more open to such technologies.
The Malaysian Government for example has been the first to advocate and endorse smart cards for a wide scale Government application – the Government multi-purpose card (GMPC) project.
Hong Kong has released a tender for the development of a smart card based ID project, Macau has just awarded a tender, and Japan is expected to launch its smart card ID next year.
Over 1.9 billion units were shipped last year, of which over 685 million (35 percent) were microprocessor based smart cards, according to research firm Gartner Dataquest.