Ray Van Eng (09/29/97)
About 1,000 U.S. Marine Corps personnel at the Air Station New River in Jacksonville, North Carolina are taking part in a one year Smart Technologies Pilot which begins in September 1997 involving the use of smart card technology to manage travel arrangement, food service, armory check-in and check-out, and electronic purse functions. The Marines will be issued either one of the two newly minted American Express smart cards known as the GovernmentFunds and the Government Cards. Both of these cards contain an 8K computer chip. They also have a regular magnetic stripe that serves different functions: stored value for the Government Funds Card and regular credit card transactions for the Government Card. The magnetic stripe will expand the usefulness of the smart cards for Marines on leave away from the base. Each Marine can enable the electronic purse application by loading money from his/her Marine Federal Credit Union account to the smart card which can then be used to pay for purchases at base facilities such as Officer's Club, bowling alley, barber shop and vending machines. When the money is depleted, the smart card can be reloaded again with new funds. The smart card which stores such personal information as name, rank, social security number, and even the platoon code will allow the Navy to monitor many logistic tasks at the base. Coupled with a back-end database, the smart card system can keep track of the issuance and return of weapons and armories and be able to trace the physical movement of the Marines as to what type of transportation they are using, where they are going etc. Food service providers will also be able to identify a Marine's meal plan based on the data stored in the card and can check whether payment is due. The smart cards are being deployed at New River base first and will be expanded to accommodate another 1,000 Marines located at Camp Lejeune later. American Express is using the Belgium Banksys Proton system for the e-purse application. The smart card itself is made by Bull Personal Transaction Systems. Logicon developed the software for the armory, food service and manifest applications. Oracle Corp. is responsible for the database program for the Marine Corp. to centrally manage travel arrangements process. Intermec supplied the smart card readers. This is not the first time American Express is working with the U.S. Marines. Back in November 1996, Amex teamed up with the Navy to launch the Yorktown Cash Card, a single-application electronic purse program for navy personnel to use aboard the USS Yorktown cruiser. Earlier in May, Amex has also launched a pilot with the Hilton Hotel chain and American Airlines in which smart cards were used to automate hotel check-ins and check-outs and airplane boardings without going through the slow and tedious process of waiting in line at the lobby or the airline ticket booth to have the paper work done. |