Roland Moreno is probably the most famous inventor in the smart card industry, credited in many circles as THE creator of the Smart card. Roland was a brilliant inventor and engineer, and had a clear vision of a future, where the smart card played an important role in everyday life.
Roland's first patent in 1974, relating to smart card technology was actually a Smart ring concept.
This idea was not so practical, but encapsulated the concept of an everyday functional smart device.
Moreno re-imagined the concept in 1975 as a chip embedded card, and began work on the hardware to facilitate transactions for smart banking EFTPOS, using smart card technology.
Roland's first prototypes were a mass of complex wiring, and it took some time to arrive at a system that would be presented to the French banking systems. The French government and banks took notice, and even as early as 1980, a number of banking prototypes were being tested, as well as a number of other non banking concepts. Some of Roland Moreno's original EFTPOS demonstration hardware was auctioned publicly in 2026, and we can show some of these images.
The cards used in this device had a more complex wiring than other smart card designs. There were 20 blade contacts wired to the central chip. The Germans called these "messerkontakt" meaning knife, or blade contacts. Moreno's system incorporated the known PIN number function already employed in ATM systems since 1967.
It is important in any article on Smartcard EFTPOS development to clarify that there is no SINGLE inventor of the Smart card. While noting that Roland Moreno's invention of his EFTPOS system was central to the uptake of smartcard technology in France, important invention of Smartcards were also taking place in Japan and Germany.
Jurgen Dethloff and Helmut Grotrupp in Germany, took out Smartcard patents as early as 1969, and Dr. Kunitaka Arimura lodged a foundational IC card patent in Japan in March 1970. At the time of writing, we have no access to prototype images of Arimura technology, but we can show an early engineering prototype of Jurgen Dethloff mid 1970's, as well as an early demo card for VISA from the late 1970's. Both cards have the "messerkontakt" used on early European chip card technology.
In Japan, there were a number of smartcard banking trials conducted by various banks in the 1980's, based on Arimura patents. These cards are hard to obtain, as the trials were often small in scale, with as little as 500 cards produced. Casio developed Microcard based on Arimura patents, and supplied Smart banking cards to field trials in USA as well as Japan.
In Germany, 2 notable uptake of Dethloff patents need to be included in the French banking story. Giesecke and Devrient were involved in Smart card laboratory development from at least 1979, and the Joint venture development of Valvo and Philips in Germany is approximately contemporary with the G&D development.
G&D cards were manufactured in Germany for the Lyon IPSO trials on behalf of Flonic Schlumberger from 1980-1984. During this time, Flonic Schlumberger set up French manufacturing facilities, in preparation for Phonecard production, and some smart banking card production on a lesser scale.
Valvo-Philips developed 2 distinct Smart card designs, under the inventor and developer Dr. Ing. Wofgang Kern. Philips Germany cards used the 9 Messerkontakt interface, and Valvo a 9 buttonkontakt interface. Both Smartcard types incorporated a 2 chip architecture. The important German-French relationship MUST be drawn here to the French Philips development. Philips in France also set up laboratory development of a 2 chip module that was used in the IPSO project, connecting them to the contemporary German Philips development.
So, here we must acknowledge that 2 out of 3 participants in the IPSO trials in France were based on BOTH the French patents of Roland Moreno, AND the German patents of Jurgen Dethloff and Helmut Grottrup. Anyone questioning these relationships ignores the reality of concurrent technological developments and relationships between Germany and France. The primary ties were to the Innovatron patents though, due to the Trials taking place inside France.
The reference collection contains original documents and cards establishing these technological relationships. For example we can compare the Valvo-Philips German cards with the Philips cards of France. The white card shown here is a Philips France laboratory card, with the same 2 chip layout as the IPSO cards.
Valvo-Philips cards
It is interesting to note that the first EFTPOS trials using Chipcards
IPSO-Caen
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