A new smartcard could replace everything from driving licences to credit cards

Disclaimer: This information comes from sources that cannot be verified. As such, make no assumptions about its completeness or accuracy. We endeavor to keep this information up to date as much as possible. Feel free to send comments/ updates to the Security News Editor.

Financial Times, May 1, 1997, p. 10.

Technology + Andrew Baxter

The world in your wallet

A new smartcard could replace everything from driving licences to credit cards

Mr Hardy Hennige was trying to make a phone call in Switzerland. "I had about 20 cards of various types in my wallet but I didn't have a Swiss phonecard. I thought there must be a way to combine them all into one," he says.

That was seven years ago, and Mr Hennige believes he has come up with the solution. He has invented the e-pass. a smartcard with built-in touchscreen which, he says. could carry out functions performed by everything from driving licences and ID cards to credit cards and cash.

Instead of a wallet full of cards people could use a single multi-functional card no thicker than a small calculator, say the new card's developers.

"It's going to have a radical impact on the life of the whole developed world," enthuses Mr Tom Heinersdorff, a consultant who has been working with London-based E-Pass International "It's a future smartcard and a future mobile PC."

Mr Hennige - a German entrepreneur now based in the north of England - has spent about L1m ($1.62m) patenting the e-pass concept in Europe, the US and most other big potential markets, and patents are pending elsewhere. Although the e-pass is not yet in production that could take a year or two - he is convinced that it will be the next generation of smartcards.

The e-pass, he claims, inspired the "wallet PC" envisaged by Mr Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman, in his 1995 book "The Road Ahead," which in turn has given Mr Hennige's invention credibility. "Interest in e-pass is colossal," he says.

The system would have a wide range of uses, including identification. "It would reduce the cost of administering national ID schemes, which is why governments are interested in it," says Mr Heinersdorff.

But, he believes, it would be particularly useful for travellers, who could download their medical records on to it, book their airline seat with it and use it as their ticket.

The e-pass is a logical progression from a recent innovation in smartcard technology - cards with small reader-screens attached "A card with a screen in one is the next step," says Mr Ron Holland, executive chairman of Xanadu, E-Pass's parent company.

Details of the production versions have yet to be decided, and could change as new technologies are developed. The e-pass would have one or two screens which could be activated by stylus or, more likely, voice recognition "To make it small, you have to take the keyboard away," says Mr Heinersdorff. "But you also have to show what's in the card, to give customers confidence. So you need a screen."

Access to the system would be via fingerprint or voice recognition, giving a high level of security and removing the need for the cardholder to remember a pin number. The card would run on solar power and batteries which would recharge when the card is inserted into a transaction device such as a cash register.

The card would use infrared technology to transfer data to and from other devices, including digital TVs and web-TVs. The infrared lens would restrict the thinness of the card to about 4mm, says Mr Hennige, but would create room for the rest of the electronics.

Two recent innovations, unveiled at this year's Smart Card Show in the UK, could help make the card thinner. One was an Israeli battery as thin as aluminium foil, and the other was a flexible screen, of which the best Mr Hennige saw was from Samsung of Korea.

One thing that has been decided is that neither E-Pass nor Xanadu will make the card. Xanadu is raising funds in a private placement to buy the patent rights from Mr Hennige, who will receive royalties and will remain as managing director of E-Pass. "I want to be in the driving seat," he says.

Once it has acquired the rights, Xanadu will try to sign up a worldwide network of licensees, associated enterprises and partners.

"The attitude here is one of total humility," says Mr Heinersdorff. "There is no way that one company could attain a fraction of this product's world-wide potential."

Mr Hennige has been in contact with companies ranging from Microsoft and International Business Machines to Motorola but the only deal so far agreed is with Gemplus, the fast- growing French manufacturer of smartcards which is working on a prototype. One of Gemplus' big UK customers is keen to run a pilot project with e-pass, says Mr Hennige. The e-pass will not be the only multifunction smartcard available, and rival technologies such as the Swatch Access watch-with-a-chip are being developed so it can display information as well as store it. But anyone who wants to build a screen into a smartcard will have to talk to Mr Hennige. "The patents are frighteningly strong," he says.