More information on the GSA smart card biometric pilot, from American Banker of May 17:
"Starting this month, the [Visa] cards will be given to employees at the agency's Willow Wood building in Fairfax, Va. Each of the Visa cards comes with a computer chip, a standard magnetic stripe, and the cardholder's photo on the back.
"The card serves as a commercial charge card, provides authorized entry to secure building areas, tracks the movement of office equipment, and employs digital certificates and biometric identification to authenticate electronic mail and assure secure logons to personal computers.
"GSA cardholders will be able to use smart card readers at 90 airports to automate check-ins on American Airlines flights. The cards also serve as telephone calling cards for business purposes.
. . .
"Visa has been involved in chip programs at three military facilities: Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Benning, with cards issued by First Union Corp., and Lackland Air Force Base, with cards from Bank of America Corp. . . .
"The Willow Wood pilot is scheduled to run for nine months. The GSA asked Citibank, the bank it chose over four other eligible bidders for government payment card services, to package several applications together in the Visa Open Platform framework.
"The fact that Visa is working on this high-profile project with Citibank indicates that the organizations are on good terms . . . .
"For GSA, the Citigroup banking subsidiary drew on International Business Machines Corp.'s MFC operating system, Siemens 66 chips, 3-G International for systems integration, GTE Cybertrust for digital certificates, and the Sun Microsystems Java Card technology as adapted by Visa.
"Identicator Technology, a division of Identix Inc. that also worked with First Union at Fort Leonard Wood, supplied fingerprinting hardware and software. PC keyboards with fingerprint scanners and smart card slots were supplied by Cherry Corp."
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OK, so know we know it is IDX/IDT in the GSA pilot. And it is with Visa, Citibank and First Union, as well as Cherry. Even American Airlines (why let United have all the fun).
Tell me if someone has used this slogan before, but how about "IDX . . . for everywhere you'd like to be." |
