ID Cards Shipments Rising From 450 Million in 2009 to 650 Million by 2015

The U.S. Permanent Resident Card (‘Green Card’) supplied by LaserCard Corporation has been judged the world’s leading government ID card in terms of technology and user utility in a new report by Frost & Sullivan.

Thirteen large government ID programs from around the world are assessed in the report. Rankings were based on a combination of factors including security, durability, utility, range of applications, and demand or adoption by end users.

Shyam Krishnan, Industry Analyst at Frost & Sullivan and author of the LaserCard-sponsored report, said: "Our report identified a representative sample of government ID projects based on a multi-faceted ranking system. The U.S. Green Card scored particularly well due to the extreme levels of security, large data storage capacity, the presence of an RFID chip and the flexibility provided by its optical security media (OSM)."

Other notable card projects mentioned in the report included the chip-based multi-functional Malaysian MyKad national identity card; the OSM-based Costa Rican Foreign Resident Card and the Carabinieri (Italian National Police) ID card, which features a combination of contact and contactless chip, and optical security media.

Robert DeVincenzi, president and CEO at LaserCard, said: "We are pleased that our customers have been recognized for their leadership in the innovative application of security methods and technology. We believe the report points to a growing trend in the application of layered and integrated document security techniques."

The report examines
a number of industry trends and imperatives:

• the growing sophistication of ID card technology and construction
• the importance of multiple layers of visual, physical and digital security
• an increasing requirement for high functionality
• the growing need for scalable government ID solutions that allow for the addition of data over time and the challenges faced in accommodating this feature
• growing interest from governments worldwide in advanced ID cards: Frost & Sullivan forecast global shipments rising from 450 million units in 2009 to 650 million by 2015
• the need for storage of increasingly large volumes of personal data, biometrics and other identification mechanisms on the card itself, which has led to a migration towards chips and optical security media

U.S. Green Card
Through the U.S. government’s Financial Year 2009, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has issued more than 30 million ID cards incorporating optical security media. There is no known case of the optical security media having been successfully counterfeited or compromised.

The Frost & Sullivan report describes the newly redesigned 2010 U.S. Green Card as ‘among the most physically secure and counterfeit-resistant machine-readable identification cards ever issued’. The new card builds on the success of the legacy OSM-based Green Card, introduced in 1997, and leverages USCIS’ expertise as the world leader in personalizing optical security media ID cards. The new card also features an ICAO-compliant design and its embedded RFID tag ensures compatibility with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI).

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