New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.smartcards.frost.com), World Contactless Smart Cards Market, reveals that the market earned revenues of $408.9 million in 2005, and estimates this to reach $1,636.2 million in 2011.

However, the increasing use of contactless smart cards in payment, transit and ID raises questions from privacy and human rights advocate groups owing to the lack of and understanding about the technology and the confusion between radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and contactless smart card. While RFID tags are designed to be cheaper and less secure for applications used in supply chain management and the tracking of non-human goods, contactless smart cards are made to be more secure and reliable so that even highly confidential and private information can be transacted and stored.

Therefore, vendors and government agencies should initiate greater efforts to promote awareness and demonstrate that contactless smart cards can be implemented in a highly secure method and can be relied on for secure transactions in payment, health and identification. Besides alleviating user anxiety, market participants should also address transitory rollout issues.

The World Contactless Smart Cards Market is part of the Smart Cards Growth Partnership Service, which includes research services in the following: world smart card markets and world smart card IC market. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.