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Comment by hugorodgerbrown | Hacker News Reader

I did some JavaCard development on a project probably ten years ago - and the highlight was meeting the "Head of SIM" at a major network, being told how many times a day everyone's SIM card 'crashes'.

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I wrote my Master's thesis on software platforms for smartcard applications in 1999. An interesting platform running javacard apart from SIMs is/was the Java iButton from Maxim (then Dallas Semiconductor).

Also, all ATM cards which are smartcards (i.e. almost all of them in countries such as France, Norway) can also hold several applications. The banks just doesn't allow it. In theory you could, even with today's technology, buy a blank card (say, with a David Bowie picture if that's your thing) and have the bank, visa, mastercard, grocery loyalty programme, library card, frequent flyer applications etc on it. Just carry one card! But no, everyone wants to own the card have their logo in it. Sigh.

I'm in London and they are rolling out contactless applications for certain things now. Subway sandwiches all take them. London buses you can pay by swipign your debit card and there is one bank that has a debit card/oyster card(oyster card is use on all London transport).

We used to have them in Poland for a few years now, virtually every single place has contactless terminals. In the UK I managed to use mine at Greggs,and the lady working there had absolutely no idea what I've just done, they were very confused after I told them that they have contactless terminals. Other than that, Subway and McDonalds have them.

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