RFID ID Card Overview

Technology has grown in many sectors during the past decade and this has brought new advances in everything from computers and automobiles to your identity cards.

There is an especially effective technology that surrounds ID cards today and one that is slipping into greater use among companies and employers. This technology is called RFID, and the cards it powers are called ‘contactless smart cards.’

The technology behind the card is Radio frequency identification, or RFID. RFID is a broad term that encompasses the span of technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify people or objects and work with a microchip to store information.

The most common way of storing information is to store a serial number that identifies a person, object, or information on a microchip. The microchip is attached to an antenna and imbedded between the layers of the card.  Information can be written, erased, and rewritten, and is stored on the microchip and transmitted by the antenna.

The chip and antenna combination is called an RFID transponder or an RFID tag. The antenna enables the chip to transmit the identification information to a reader. Radio waves reflected from the card (RFID tag) to the reader allow the reader to convert the radio waves reflected back from the RFID tag into digital information that can be processed by the computer.

Instead of inserting your card into a card acceptor or scanning it through, all you have to do is pass within range of the radio frequency acceptor and you are done.  You usually have to be within a few inches of the machine for it to operate, but it still saves a ton of time and headache.

The greatest benefit of this card is its inherent security. Forging a card like RFID is very difficult and it greatly minimizes security risks.  RFID cards can be used by anyone, and are most effective in every environment from the very large to the very small.

Contactless smart cards are applicable to every need that regular ID cards (contact smart cards) fulfill.  The speed and efficiency of these cards is highly prized, as is their convenience for the user.