A

ABS

Acronym of Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, plastic material formed all the way through injection molding, used for some smart cards.

Access Control Card

Magnetic or chip cards with or lacking photo used to go into restricted areas (e.g., ID badges)

B

Blank Cards

Cards with no printing typically used in imagining machines

Chip

A piece of silicon imprinted with an electronic circuit.

C

Coercivity

A determinination of the strength of a magnetic field. Fields are expressed as little or high by the terms LoCo and HiCo

Combi-card

Holding both contact and contactless technology on one card

Contact

A point of electrical connection among a smart card and its outside interface device

Contact Card

Any card where information is transferred to a reader by means of a series of contact points located on the card

Contactless Card

Smart card which transfers information by means of radio frequency technology using a transmitter and receiver

D

Degaussing

Magnetic stripe data removal

Digitizing

Swap over of non-textual data to digital form