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Indonesia to introduce Smart Cards for Investors

Thursday, May 31, 2007

by Adi Tedjasaputra

Revealed at the Seminar on Investment Opportunities in Indonesia yesterday in Singapore, the plan of introducing a Smart Card system for Singaporeans travelling to Riau Islands of Indonesia is expected to improve the current travelling procedures and boost the trade within the region.

The Indonesia's Governor of Riau Island, Ismeth Abdullah, quoted by Singapore's Today Newspaper, said: "This means Singaporeans can travel anywhere in the Riau Islands without using a passport."

The announcement was not something new for the residence of Batam Island, which is part of the Riau Islands. According to the statement from I Gede Widiartha, Batam Immigration Office Head, to Batam Pos in February 2007, the use of Smart Card in the island has started since 1994. He further said that Singapore and Malaysia actually learnt from Indonesia (Batam), before they implemented Smart Card around year 2000. It is an irony, however, that Batam is still currently unable to manufacture its own Smart Card, while Singapore and Malaysia have been able to produce a unit of Smart Card within minutes.

While the contactless Smart Card technology begs to be different from the RFID technology, in reality the contactless Smart Card technology used for biometric passports and ID cards is indeed RFID technology.

Frost & Sullivan pointed out in its recent press release that RFID and contactless Smart Cards are seeing healthy growth levels in the Asia Pacific region, but noted a concern about the lack of understanding in the similarities and differences between the RFID and contactless Smart Card technologies. The company further introduces its new program RFID vs Contactless Smart Card, presumably taken from the title of the article published by RFID Asia on August 25, 2006 that underlines the need to understand RFID technology, while embracing and tackling the RFID challenges and concerns, instead of taking aggressive-defensive stand.

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Labels: card, indonesia, malaysia, rfid, singapore, technology