General Questions

A Smart Card is a credit-card-sized plastic card that contains an Integrated Circuit with memory, and circuitry controlling the access rules to the memory. Common Smart Cards use 5 to 8 golden contacts on one side of the card as a communication mean with a Smart Card Reader, and the Integrated Circuit is behind the contacts.

What makes the card "smart", compared to a memory card or magnetic card, is the enforcing of access control rules to the memory: for example some areas (like card holder name) might be made read-only after it is first written; and/or an area (holding the card value) might be written only in a manner allowing the value of the card to go down, not up. This access control can be performed by an 8-bit microcontroller similar to a Motorola 6805 or an Intel 8051, or by even simpler circuitry in low-end Smart Cards.

Smart cards were independently invented in Germany (1967), Japan (1970), the United States (1972), and France (1974). In 1980, when France began a major campaign to export the technology, Roy Bright of the government's marketing organization, Intelmatique, coined the phrase "smart card" to describe the technology.

Most English dictionaries use "smart card" but you'll see both in use. In French it's "carte a puce" which is roughly "card of a flea". Tiny integrated circuit chips look like fleas.