3 Types of Cards in Competition

Facts about the types of cards whose makers are competing to produce the national health care card:

* Magnetic stripe cards: Major producers are Malco Plastics of Baltimore; Perfect Plastic of Chicago; Kirk Plastic of Rancho Dominguez, Calif.; NBS Card Services Inc. of South Plainfield, N.J.; and Colorado Plasticard Inc. of Littleton, Colo. . . . Used in the United States as credit cards, debit cards, automated-teller cards, driver’s licenses, workplace identification cards and health insurance cards. . . . Readers are relatively inexpensive and widely available. . . . Vulnerable to loss of data if the stripes are scratched with paper clips or keys or the cards come near small appliances or magnetic door catches. . . . Nearly one in 10 transactions fails because of card damage, according to card security specialist XTEC Inc. of Miami.

* Smart cards: Major producers include AT&T; DataCard Corp. of suburban Minneapolis; Gemplus Card International Corp. of France; Dallas-based MicroCard Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of France’s Group Bull; and Toshiba Corp. of Tokyo. . . . First worldwide patent issued to French journalist Roland Moreno in 1974. . . . Marine recruits in Parris Island, S.C., and Club Med vacationers have bought supplies with smart cards.

* Optical cards: Major producers include Canon Inc. of Tokyo; LaserCard Systems Corp. of Mountain View, Calif., a subsidiary of Drexler Technology Corp. of Mountain View; and Dai Nippon Printing Co. of Tokyo. . . . Invented by LaserCard founder Jerry Drexler in 1981. . . . Used for health insurance in parts of Scotland and Taiwan. . . . Has enough memory to hold a complete medical history and a digital image of a patient’s face for identification.