There was a nice little press release from research firm IMS
this
week headlined, “Smart Card Global Domination Nearing Completion”. The
report is all about the fact that there will be over seven billion smart cards
issued in 2009. The human race won’t reach seven billion people until 2011, so
there will be more smart cards out there than humans.
qualify this to say that the number includes SIM cards for mobile handsets,
which constitute 2.7 billion of the cards. Now I had assumed that they meant
bank cards when I saw that headline, but bank cards only represent a billion of
the total with government, health and other markets propping up the rest.
So, I decided to scramble around and see if I could find a few other
stats, starting with mobile telephones.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...