Bedford, Mass.

Replacing magnetic stripe cards with smart cards can improve efficiency and security. A long time ago, in a place far, far away— Europe—smart cards were invented to reduce the prodigious amount of theft and fraud involved in the telecommunications industry. In order to prohibit high-tech thieves from duplicating legitimate phone cards, a new card was developed using an embedded microchip to store data and cryptography to protect the integrity and privacy of card-related transactions. Today, there are billions of these cards—called smart cards—in use across Europe and Asia, yet there are only a few million in the United States. The reason, explained Roland