Ken, I'm curious to know what you find. I've seen flash and FRAM memory posed a the chip part of this technology, but I don't know much about it. I've also seen some very interesting for smart cards using what they call,
SIM APPLICATION TOOLKIT
SIM Application Toolkit has been agreed and incorporated within the Global System for Mobiles (GSM) standard. "SIM" denotes the smart card inserted into GSM mobile phones that contains information about the user.
SIM Application Toolkit allows the flexibility to update the SIM to alter the services and download new services over the air. For example, network operators can remotely provision the user's wireless terminal by sending codes embedded in short messages from the server. Within the SIM Application Toolkit specification, the Short Message Service is a key mechanism for personalizing the SIM in each user's GSM phone.
SIM Application Toolkit is designed as a client-server application. On the server side, SimCard platform specialists such as Orga, Gemplus and AU-System have introduced servers based on this standard. (See www.orga.com www.ausys.com/sim/). On the client side, phone manufacturers such as Siemens, Motorola and Alcatel have launched phones that have support SIM Application Toolkit. Significantly, two of the three largest mobile phone vendors, Ericsson and Nokia, have not launched or announced SIM Application Toolkit compliant phones.
This is taken from a very interesting document called FutureFoneZone at dataonsms.com
The importance of this kind of smart card is that you will use your cell phone to make payments whenever there is a Bluetooth kind of wireless connection. Walk into the movie theatre and buy a ticket without standing in line, or press abutton on your phone and a coke comes out of the machine. This technology seems to be developing in Europe ahead of the US, so normally we won't see it coming as quickly.
Going back to American Express. I checked their web site and saw they mostly talked about servics, not technology as would be correct since they don't sell it because it's technically cool, but hopefully very useful.
Regards,
Mark
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