Smart Cards and RFID - What Is the Difference?

Filed in archive Tags and Readers on November 2, 2005

TechRepublic's Bob Artner hosts a WhiteBoard Video over at ZDNet that explains the differences between RFID and smart cards. It is 4.29 minutes and definitely useful.

He compares the differences between RFID and smart card technology in understandable everyday language, with a clear leaning toward smart cards.

Here in the U.S. the average person hardly knows what smart cards are. Smart cards are much more prevalent in Europe and other parts of the world.

During the late 1990s when I did some work in the U.K., smart cards were everywhere, even then. People used smart cards to secure their laptops. You had to insert a smart card in order to get the laptop to work.

Same thing with car radios. I remember my amazement when riding in the car with a colleague. We were in the "City" in London (a compact area that makes up the financial district). When we parked the car, he pulled out the smart card from the car radio and took it with him, in much the same way here in the States people popped out expensive aftermarket stereos before leaving their cars in the inner city. He explained that without the smart card the stereo was worthless and no one would steal it. Whether the card actually operated as an effective anti-theft device, I am not sure, but he certainly thought so.

My point: smart cards have been in use for some time. Yet to most Americans they are exotic and new.

In the WhiteBoard Video, Artner suggests that smart cards are the future for government ID uses, and not RFID. He predicts that government ID cards will go the smart card route, and not RFID.

I beg to differ on the future prediction part, however. While smart cards offer certain advantages, it is the contactless nature of RFID that is precisely so enticing for certain uses.

Anyway, that horse has already left the stable, with the United States, Norway, Germany and other countries already well along toward adopting RFID in passports, for instance.

Watch the video comparing smart cards and RFID. It is worth your time.