On Digital Money and Card Technologies

We survey two related fields: digital money and card technologies (especially smart cards), for possible PhD research topics. We believe that digital money and card technologies will revolutionize life in the 21st century. It will be shown that privacy issues are of serious concern, but that well-designed implementations can have long-term strategic and economic benefits to society. We have been following these two fields for a number of years. It is only very recently that digital money and card technologies have captured the attention of the North American marketplace. We believe that there will be significant research opportunities in these areas for years to come, as evidenced by recent commercial interest in supporting financial transactions via the Internet. This paper examines various aspects of digital money and card technologies, and attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of these fields and their research prospects.