Disabled access will be improved on the six-mile long system and a smartcard ticketing system added.

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TfL also operates the Oyster smartcard scheme which uses an earlier RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology.

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Hot Desk uses SmartCard technology to allow users to access information anywhere within a workgroup environment.

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To gain entry and traverse interior doors, you must flash a smartcard and punch in a numeric code.

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Other cities are watching very closely and many won't bother introducing their own smartcard systems if the bankcard system works.

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Users insert a SmartCard into the device which authenticates the user's ID.

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Claire Lewis, the council's waste disposal and recycling manager, said Bracknell was using its own recycling smartcard rather than giving residents rewards vouchers.

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Nearly two decades ago Visa, MasterCard and Europay (now part of MasterCard) joined together to develop smartcard standards in order to ensure global interoperability for an emerging technology that promised to increase credit card security.

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"Concerns about smartcard security have increased with the wide availability of sophisticated tools and invasive techniques to discover the secrets and keys that traditionally protect devices from counterfeiting, tampering and theft-of-data, " said Pim Tuyls, CEO at Intrinsic-ID.

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