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PARIS (20 October, 1997) -- For the first time, the Java Card Forum, a consortium of Smart Card manufacturers committed to the Java™ Card standard, have consulted with industry-leading Smart Card issuers to further stimulate the growing market for Java-based smart card applications. At its recent meeting in Paris, the Java card Forum for the first time included in its discussions "Strategic Partners" from 3 major industry sectors: Banking/Finance, represented by American Express, Citibank, Banksys, Barclay's, GIE Carte Bancaire, Mondex and Visa; Information Technology, represented by Hewlett-Packard and NTT Data; and Telecommunications, represented by Swisscom and Telecom Finland. The Strategic Partners provided input to the Forum members (Bull, De La Rue, Gemplus, Giesecke & Devrient, Hitachi, IBM, Keycorp, Axalto and Toshiba) regarding technical issues and industry-specific extensions that could be made to the Java Card specification. The goal of involving the industry partners is to ensure interoperability of Java Card applications across all industry segments, thereby extending the Write Once, Run AnywhereTM promise of Java to the world of smart cards and smart card readers. The use of Java on smart cards will mean that all cards can be used in any type of card reader terminal, from automatic teller machines to cell phones to computer system access devices. Also at the Paris meeting, the Java Card Forum Technical Committee provided its input to Sun on version 2.0 of the Java Card specification, which was posted for public review at Sun on 12 September. To reflect the growing demand for Java-based smart cards, the Java Card Forum plans to expand its Strategic Partner Program in the future to include representatives from the Health Care, Television Broadcasting and Transportation industries. The Java Card members are present at the Cartes '97 exhibition in Paris
15-17 October and will demonstrate their most recent Java Card implementations.
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