Though smart cards are already being used for a variety of applications by several organisations in the country, particularly security and banking, till now these were being manufactured abroad and are being marketed here by two multinational companies.

SCL Director Dr M.J. Zarabi said that the SCL is the first company in the country to go in for the manufacture of smart cards.

A smart card is a credit card sized plastic card with an embedded microchip and is a secure and convenient data carrier that communicates directly with a computer-based information processing system. Since certain codes are embedded in it at the time of manufacture and also by special process later on, these cannot be duplicated.

SCL officials say that they have received an order to manufacture up to two lakh smart cards for NIC's head office. The order, received about two weeks back, is expected to be complete in about 12 weeks. They added that since SCL was already designing and manufacturing microchips, only little modifications to the existing infrastructure was required.

Officials also hope to tap into the driving licence and telecommunications segment. Sources say that the Department of Telecommunications is in the process of issuing a tender concerning pay phones which accept smart cards. The pilot project would entail about 5,000 such pay phones in the metros each expected to have a clientele of up to 1,000 card holders. This, they add, means 10 million smart cards in the first year alone.

Driving licences on smart cards, which would prevent forgery, store requisite information and can be verified by a handheld devise the size of a cell phone, are also in the pipeline.

SCL officials say that a survey conducted by them some time back revealed that about 65 per cent of the respondents said that they are in favour of using smart cards.

Smart cards have a variety of applications like identification, telecommunication, security and access control, utility metering, banking and health. Smart cards can eliminate the use of having multiple cards for separate applications.

Smart cards can work as national identity (ID) cards, driving licences, public distribution systems, voters' cards as well as secure ID cards for organisations and for access control. With the introduction of automatic teller machine cards, electronic purses, credit and debit cards, the banking industry is emerging as the major user of smart cards technology.

Smart health cards is another avenue. The same card can also store information like medical history, patient data and health insurance, which an individual can always carry on his person.

Other applications for smart cards include prepaid transport fare card, toll collection, prepaid phone cards and GSM cards for cellular phones.