As early as 1969, patents have been made for the idea of Smart Cards. The term SMART card, refers to a card, normally of ISO standard credit card size, with an integrated circuit, incorporating silicon chip technology. Jurgen Dethloff, and Helmut Grottrup together applied for a series of patents, mostly from 1969 to 1971, and also Kunitaka Arimura in Japan from 1970, but it was Roland Moreno of France who was most successful with his chip card patents (from 1974-1975). This is because the major banks and the PTT (Telecom) of France who entered arrangements with the government of France to develop Smart card technology for the payment and banking systems of France. The IPSO trials became the flagship for phonecard and EFTPOS systems for the rest of the world.
Here we will present a series of articles to educate on the history of Chipcard technology in France, Germany, and other countries as the technology evolved with new innovation.
