Princeton Junction, NJ, August 24, 2006–The Smart Card Alliance, the authoritative voice for the rapidly growing smart card industry, will hold its 14th annual conference at the Hyatt Regency–La Jolla Hotel in San Diego, California, from October 3-6, 2006. Each year, this premier event showcases leaders and innovators in the use of smart cards across all industries and market segments in North America and around the world.

“Preparing the Way for a Smart Future” is the theme of this year’s conference. Agenda topics will focus on major industry developments in market adoption and technology innovation for smart cards. This year’s featured keynote speakers include experts from every corner of the industry and represent both government and commercial perspectives. Their topics will range from security to financial to identity issues and include hands-on project leaders who are involved in some of the most exciting smart card projects in the world:

• R. James Woolsey, former CIA Director, on global issues affecting national security
• Maurico Cuehlo, director of Brazil’s Information Technology Institute, on Brazil’s national digital credentialing and PKI project
• Paul Contino, Mount Sinai Hospital, on the New York City hospital’s network smart card project
• Steve Frazzini and Paul Korczak, MTA/New York City Transit, on the transit operator’s groundbreaking bank card pilot

“With such exciting advances in so many different markets, it is clear that smart cards are becoming part of our everyday life and will play a big role in our future,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Alliance. “This conference is a great chance for attendees to hear about the adoption that is happening across multiple market segments first hand, and discover some new advances in the industry for the very first time.”

Such smart card adoption trends covered at the conference include: contactless payments in financial markets; advanced identity credentialing projects in government; converging access control and identity management systems in enterprise security; advances in national and international fare card systems in mass transit; new uses for electronic medical records and personal health cards in healthcare; and new deployments of NFC-enabled phones in mobile telecom.

New this year is the Emerging Technology and Innovation Showcase reception, where selected industry providers will display newly designed technology and applications for smart cards to the public for the first time. As always, the conference program will feature individual and panel presentations by industry experts and end users, birds-of-a-feather discussion groups that encourage attendee’s participation and great networking opportunities. At the Annual Awards Luncheon, the Alliance will recognize winners of its Outstanding Smart Card Achievement (OSCA) awards, including awards for Outstanding Individual Leadership, the Outstanding Supplier and the Outstanding Issuer for North America. Also, the Smart Card Alliance Educational Institute will host a full day, post-conference workshop, offering a separate interactive classroom training course on Friday, October 6th. The course will focus on the foundation of smart card technology, its applications in banking, identity and security, and card personalization and issuance best practices.

The conference is open to everyone who is interested in learning about the latest market developments and applications in the smart card industry. Smart Card Alliance members receive special registration benefits and discounts. Early registration discounts for all attendees expire on September 1st, so make your conference and hotel reservations today. The latest agenda, event pricing and online registration can be found on the “next meeting” site on the Alliance Web site at /activities-next-conference.

About the Smart Card Alliance

Smart Card Alliance is a not-for-profit, multi-industry association working to stimulate the understanding, adoption, use and widespread application of smart card technology. Through specific projects such as education programs, market research, advocacy, industry relations and open forums, the Alliance keeps its members connected to industry leaders and innovative thought. The Alliance is the single industry voice for smart cards, leading industry discussion on the impact and value of smart cards in the U.S. and Latin America. For more information visit http://www.securetechalliance.org.