Outbreak for Smart Card Chip

Are you still using cash for your bill, and then you are outdated. Today’s payment market is increasingly dominated by smart card, whose installed base in 2012 is estimated to have passed 14.6 billion.

Driven by the need for tamper-free system, the expanded application of smartphone and tablets, global smart card chip market is coming to eruption, finding more ways in application segments, such as transportation, telecommunication, government IDs and financial sector.

Future prospect depict is less convincing than data; let’s see the following data fact, especially from China, the major driving force:

Social security card: given the target requirement of China’s “Twelve Five” plan, Chinese social security cards see rapid growth. It is projected that nationwide social security cards this year will reach 480 million; increments in 2014 and 2015 further come to over 150 million.

Financial IC card: People’s Bank of China poses clear requirements for completing the migration of financial IC card by 2015, ensuring the rapid uptrend of financial IC card in recent years. According to the latest statistics, issuing volume of the cumulative financial IC card in China has amounted to 340 million; financial IC card has entered the peak period of EMV migration.

Smart cards are an important national economic and information security products; and have been widely used in telecommunications, finance, public security, social security, transportation, health and logistics and other fields. With the popularity of networking, cloud computing, e-commerce and e-government applications, smart cards are expanding its application segments. CAGR of China’s financial cards in the next five years will exceed 20%.

Mobile payment: as a major new application of smartphone, is growing into a blue sea. ABI Research foresees an incredible 48 of CAGR for the U.S. mobile payment market, increasing from $12.8 billion in 2012 to $90 billion in 2017. As for the largest smartphone market-China, mobile payment users will reach 600 million in the coming five years. As a main contributor of mobile payment, do you cast doubt to the outlook of smart card chip?

Health card, since the introduction last year, is rapidly spreading nationwide. The increase of pilot cities, as well as rich applications ensures the market potential of health card.