Fujitsu Ltd duly confirmed our prediction (CI No 3,464) that it is to back the Multos smart card operating system, bringing its Amdahl Corp and ICL Plc subsidiaries into the Mondex camp. It is a timely rebuff to arch-rival Proton which last week brought American Express and Visa International in as partners in Proton World International, the company spun off by Belgium electronic payment consortium Banksys. Proton, which promotes the Common Electronic Purse Specification CEPS standard has moved to the bottom end of the market with a card that is pre-charged with cash to buy the small things of life. It has traditionally operated in the national currency where it is issued, though in Europe it is being extended to support the Euro. Mondex’s MULTOS standard supports multi-currencies, essential for those hopping from one country to another. But extra facilities – in terms of EEPROM Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory – is expensive and Proton boasts that its cards are a third of the price of its rivals. It also pointed out that Mondex cards are capable of card-to-card cash transfers – an unaudited process that Proton says threatens security. But the Mondex camp, which says security is built into its chip, insists that this is the whole point of smart cards: to replace cash – if you owe a friend $20, you ought to be able to pass it over to their card as easily as handing over notes.
