Category: Featured Articles

Featured Content

New Initiatives Deliver More Value One of the exciting things about leading the Smart Card Alliance is the “newness” of what we do. While the staff works on events, councils, activities and programs, they also are fine-tuning, expanding, and thinking of ways of how to continue to provide our members with more value. This applies…

Featured Content

The NFC Spring? One of the great things about the Smart Card Alliance is our ability to be in the forefront while also playing pitcher, catcher, moderator, or simply serving as a valuable, low-key utility player. I talk more about this in my letter in the April issue of Smart Card Talk. I hope to…

Featured Content

Randy Vanderhoof Testimony to House Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Smart Card Alliance Executive Director Randy Vanderhoof was invited to be a witness at the Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit hearing on “The Future of Money: How Mobile Payments Could Change Financial Services.”…

Featured Content

Steady Pace Needed For Steady Roll-Out This month has been filled with a flurry of activity. The imminent mash-up of EMV and NFC mobile payments for consumers and merchants has me simultaneously feeling optimistic about the future and pessimistic about the outcome. I’m enthusiastic about the new payments tools we have and yet have a…

Featured Content

A year of Progress Around this time last year, the Smart Card Alliance was coming off a very successful 2011 Mobile and Transit Payments Summit in Salt Lake City, where industry leaders envisioned what the market might look like in a few years. We looked at videos of Seinfeld TV series character George Costanza’s “fat…

Featured Content

MasterCard Introduces Comprehensive Roadmap Advancing Electronic Payments EMV chip cards will be the core of the next generation of U.S. electronic payments and the transition is starting now, as both MasterCard and Visa have made clear in public statements on their U.S. roadmaps. On January 30, 2012, MasterCard introduced a comprehensive strategy solidifying EMV chip…

Featured Content

The Financial and Mobile NFC Smart Card Markets It feels like yesterday that I was talking about our 10th annual Government Conference, first encouraging each of you to join us, and then recapping what was certainly one of the highlights of a very busy and satisfying year for the Smart Card Alliance. Now I invite…

Featured Content

2011 Smart Card Alliance E-Yearbook Is Available Now Dear members and friends of the Alliance, I’m delighted to announce the first ever E-Yearbook from The Smart Card Alliance, which is now available on our website. This has been a landmark year for both the North American smart card industry and the Alliance as an organization,…

Featured Content

10th Annual Government Conference A Resounding Success Throughout the year Smart Card Alliance members are kept abreast of industry news through emails, newsletters, fresh web content, white papers, conference calls and webinars. And then there are our annual events. Many of you comment to me that nothing can replace the experience of being present for…

Featured Content

Smart Card Alliance: A Mission Shared by All Last month, the entire nation paused for a day to remember the events of September 11, 2001. Watching the television programs and news specials leading up to the events marking the ten year anniversary of “9/11” reminded me of the horrors I felt inside watching the events…