Singapore has taken a step closer to its aim of becoming an intelligent island and a cash-free society, Reuter reports. Of course, money will still be needed, but under a Singapore Telecom Ltd and Network for Electronic Transfers Pte Ltd six-month pilot study, individuals will be able to leave their cash in the bank and simply carry around a multi-functional rechargeable Smart Card to pay for virtually everything. The Smart Card is supplied by Gemplus SA of Gemenos, France. The credit card-sized piece of plastic will be known in Singapore as the CashCard. Gemplus’s cards are based on Electrically Erasable and Programmable Memory technology and are known as PCOS EEPROM. Each one can hold 32 directories each with 255 files; it has 1Kb of non-volatile memory and 3Kb of ROM. The read, write and update facilities can be protected by secret codes. The cards will be issued in denominations worth around $13, $33 and $66. During the trial 40,000 Smart Cards will be issued so that Singaporeans will be able to pay the bill at restaurants, telephone calls, car parks and eventually road toll plazas at 200 kiosks where rechargeing should be possible. GEC Plessey Telecommunications Ltd’s GPT Phone Systems has supplied specially adapted payphones for the trial. Initially, the system will exist alongside Network for Electronic Transfers’ existing automatic teller machine magnetic stripe card system so that the cards in the pilot will have both a magnetic stripe and a chip. Eventually the two systems will be integrated. The funds transfer operator has seven owner banks: DBS, Keppel, Overseas Chinese Banking Corp, Overseas Union, POS, Tat Lee and United Overseas. The companies involved believe that by the year 2000 there will 9m cards in use. In its first year of real use, likely 1996, the system will cost an estimated $2.6m.
