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- LONDON - Pick a card. Any
card. Then carry the entire contents of your wallet on the back of it.
That's the promise of a new product that looks like a credit card but
fits unprecedented amounts of information on to the familiar shape that
graces millions of wallets.
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- "It's an amazing amount of information," says
Yorgos Katsanos, of Global Cybersystems, the company charged with introducing
the UltraCard.
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- So great is the capacity that one card could contain
all of your credit and loyalty cards, driving license, medical records,
diary and passport, and still have space for your favorite album and
some snapshots.
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- Regular cards can carry only a few hundred characters
on their backs, enough solely for your name and account number. Even
so-called SmartCards, with the little chips built in, can hold only about
a page of text " 0.002Mb to be exact " barely enough for your
address and billing details.
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- "Normal cards are Sixties technology and SmartCards
are Eighties technology. UltraCard is 21st century technology."
says Katsanos.
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- Developed by Upgrade International, and distributed in
Europe solely by Global Cybersystems, UltraCard can hold a minimum
of 5Mb on a magnetic strip on the back, enough for the contents of the
average novel, and Katsanos says that their prototypes can now hold 200
times that amount - one gigabyte - on the back of a card. That would be
enough to hold a full-length feature film.
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- The cards cost the same to make as the regular old design
that clutters up your wallet, but offer infinitely more uses, a fact
that has not escaped the attention of major industries. Katsanos indicated
that more than 100 major corporations had signed partnership deals, including
many banks and media companies.
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- The card's first use is likely to be with credit and
cash cards.
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- Multi-million pound losses through fraud could be prevented
if a card was made big enough to contain a fingerprint, or retina scan.
UltraCard could easily accommodate the data needed.
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