Card Briefs: 2 Smart Card Projects To Use Motorola Chips

Motorola, the world's leading supplier of microcontrollers for smart cards, announced that it has won contracts to supply chips to government smart card projects in Spain and the Czech Republic.

Motorola will provide seven million chips for the first phase of a nationwide program in Spain that is expected to grow to more than 40 million social security smart cards by 1999.

In the Czech Republic, Motorola is supplying 10,000 chips for a pilot health insurance smart card project in the Litomerice region near Prague. A countrywide health card project for 10 million people will be introduced during 1997 and 1998.

Chips for both European projects will be manufactured in Scotland, where Motorola invested $350 million in semiconductor facilities in 1995.

The Spanish social security project will use a card manufactured by Spanish card maker FNMT. Individuals will be able to use their smart cards at any one of more than 1,500 kiosk terminals and local health care computer networks to be installed nationwide. The program is expected to cost $400 million to complete.

With 1995 worldwide sales of $8.5 billion, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector is the largest U.S.-based supplier of semiconductor chips.

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