A Plastic Brain In Your Pocket

By Bruce Crumley

French microchip engineer Jean-Pierre Gloton slips a thin rectangle of plastic into a port linked to a PC and types in a code. Voila! A personalized Web navigator blossoms on the screen. "With this, I can access various e-mail accounts and websites, trade stocks, buy goods and pay bills with a single click, using personal and banking information stored in a fraud-proof way," says Gloton, 56, as he removes the "smart card" that gives him these powers and returns it to his wallet. "This card contains a microchip that makes it a veritable minicomputer--with memory and processing power," he goes on. "I can use it with any PC on Earth. It can't be used by anyone else, since only I know the code. It can't even be hacked into, since I'm usually sitting on it when it's not in use!"

The card, introduced this month under the name GemUtilities, is made by France's Gemplus, which in only 12 years of existence has become the world's leading producer of smart cards--with Gloton as its director of technology and resident genius. Americans have lagged behind Europeans in the use of smart cards but are starting to catch up. Last month Visa said it would begin issuing smart cards designed by Gemplus. They will compete with American Express's new Blue smart card, which can be used in personal computers equipped with card readers. These systems provide excellent security for online shopping; the purchase won't go through unless the owner types in a code that matches the one stored on the card's chip.

Traditional bank and credit cards are pretty dumb because they contain a magnetic strip rather than a microchip that has processing capability and holds a lot more information. One smart card, Gloton says, could function as an ID, store medical history and let us use all our bank and credit accounts. And someday it could be like cash, since everything from newsstands to vending machines will have card readers. If Gloton is right, our pockets won't be weighed down by a bunch of coins--unless we still need them for flipping.

--By Bruce Crumley

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