The Payment Industry Environment

International Card Standards - SC17 Cards and Personal Identification

On behalf of BSI we provide leadership and administrative support, i.e. the chairman and secretariat to the ISO committee responsible for plastic card standards ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC17

As well as standards for payment cards, this ISO committee addresses all aspects of generic identification associated with plastic cards. This work has assumed far greater importance for the world community since September 11th, particularly the committee’s work on machine readable travel documents including passports incorporating similar chip technology to smart cards thereby enabling biometric checking of the document holder to be deployed at border crossings. 


SC17

SC17 is a sub-committee of JTC1.  The UK holds the chair and secretariat for SC17 which develops standards in the area of:

     a) identification and related documents

     b) cards

     c) and devices associated with their use in inter industry  
        applications and international interchange.


SC17’s activities are sub-divided into nine working groups dealing with particular areas of standardisation: 

WG1

Physical Characteristics and Test Methods for Identification Cards

Concerned with the physical characteristics and test methods associated with all cards and other form factors such as embossing, magstripe and the physical size and layout of cards.

WG3

Machine Readable Travel Documents

Provides experts for much of the technical work conducted by ICAO on machine readable travel documents, in particular the newly issued passports with chip and Contactless technology.

WG4

Integrated Circuit Cards

Provides the base standards that underpin the workings of chip cards with contacts, including EMV.

WG5

Registration Management Group

Is the registration management group for IIN’s used in the routing of card transactions.

WG7

Financial Transaction Card

Has been stood down as it has no active work.  It’s only standard ISO/IEC 7813, which specifies the physical characteristics, data structure and data content of cards.  It states minimum requirements of conformity. It references layout, magnetic stripe recording techniques, numbering systems and registration procedures (Not active).

WG8

Contactless Integrated Circuit(s) Cards

Covers contactless and proximity cards and interfaces used in Contactless payment.  It maintains a close relationship with the Working Group maintaining the NFC standards that are being increasingly referenced for use in mobile payment systems.

WG9

Optical Memory Cards and Devices

Provides standards for optical memory cards and devices.

WG10

Motor Vehicle Drivers licence and related documents

Responsible for the International Driving Licence standard.

WG11

Biometric Applications

Deals with match-on-card biometric standards, where the recorded biometric data and the comparison data are processed by the card itself rather than an external terminal or database.
 

 

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