Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Cartes 2005 - Paris

Attending a trade show for the card and payment industry in Paris this week.

Unlike my previous European visits, this time there is no lake, and the weather is foul. I was greeted by dense fog and 2 degree weather on arrival at CDG.

The trade show is well attended and massive. I had no idea there were so many manufacturers of terminals and card systems. It is clear that RFID is gaining traction. There are displays of all the components (labels, readers, writers and so on) as well as system integrators.

Philips has a big booth devoted to NFC - Near Field Communications, which is the name for adding a short distance (0-10cm) two way data transmission capability to devices like cellphones. They were demonstrating a Nokia phone tricked out with an NFC module linked to the SIM card that allowed the purchase and use of movie tickets. Very cool.

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