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Use software components to deploy applications with Java Cards

A URL-based approach for deploying smart cards on different systems

By Rinaldo Di Giorgio and Mike Montgomery, JavaWorld.com, 11/22/99

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In much of Europe, smart card technology has taken the tedium out of many forms of ebusiness, freeing consumers from having to provide personal information every time they want to conduct a transaction. Java Cards, available in the US today, provide a platform for the easy deployment of multifunctional smart-card applications; unfortunately for US companies and consumers, however, they have yet to catch on here. How can the US close the smart card gap and finally realize the potential of this underused technology?

One way is to develop applications for smart cards that provide consumers and corporate users with convenient and secure methods to access services. With the right kind of smart-card applications, users will be able to avoid the tedium of repeatedly typing information on Web pages in order to conduct secure transactions. The possibilities are great. In some countries, smart cards have eliminated the need for cash, credit cards, or debit cards. But we in the US are still struggling with upgrading point-of-sale terminals in stores to accept smart cards.

And our woes don't end there. Even after typical US consumers wade through multiple layers of pages on the Web in order to carry out secure transactions, they are often reduced to repeating standard information -- name, address, phone number -- over the phone. Worse yet, we must frequently physically send that information out by surface mail once we've begun a transaction over the telephone. Wouldn't it be nice to simply send the data from your smart card? (Smart cards would also reduce the neck and shoulder pain that results from having to balance the phone for long periods of time!) Smart cards can provide a sophisticated means of doing secure transactions and pack the whole process into a small, simple-to-use storage device. In short, they give developers the opportunity to create convenient and much-needed services for users.

Trial and error

There have been many smart card trials and pilots by forward-thinking companies, but few of these programs have generated much excitement or additional value to the consumer. The trials generally lacked integration with the Web, and thus could not showcase such exciting smart-card technologies as instant authentication and affinity programs. In these trials, users still had to enter form information over and over again, prove their identity with less secure methods such as passwords -- or worse yet, social security numbers -- and fall back on paper coupons, rather than just using a smart card with a coupon in its memory.

We can do much better. The technology exists now, and the basic resources to deploy Java Card-capable platforms are easy for Java developers to understand. For online use, you need to be able to load an application on the card that works with some network-based service. We will provide fully coded and tested examples of three services for the Smart Card URL Programming Interface (UPI), an architecture developed at Sun Labs and discussed in September's installment of JavaWorld's Java Developer column. See the Resources section for links to general smart-card information.

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