CARTES in Asia, a regional exhibition for the Asia-Pacific market and a high-level congress covering digital security and smart technologies, will showcase both radio frequency identification (RFID) and near field communication (NFC) technologies at AsiaWorld-Expo in Hong Kong during 28-29 March 2012.
Organised by French trade fairs organiser Comexposium, CARTES in Asia enters its third year in 2012. Nearly 4,000 visitors from Asia-Pacific are expected at the event. There were 3056 visitors attending the exhibition last year, an increase of 8 percent compared to 2010, according to Michael Weatherseed, director of security business unit of Comexposium in a media briefing today. “Seventy-seven percent visitors were involved in the purchasing process in last year’s event compared with 71 percent in 2010 and 68 percent visitors came with specific purchasing projects compared with 60 percent in the previous year,” said Weatherseed.
Local Hong Kong companies such as Advanced Card Systems, Apollo Electronics Companies, Asia Credit Card Production, Datacard Group plan to exhibit at this year’s event. They will join world leaders Gemalto, HID Global, Ingenico, Oberthur, ST Microelectronics as well as companies from Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, UK and the US. Exhibitors participate in this event to meet decision makers from government, transport, telecoms, banking, administrative, security and retail industries looking for new technologies to make people’s lives easier.
“2012 shall be regarded as the year we will see an avalanche in mobile payments, boosting mobile e-commerce further and jumpstarting the beginning of an era dedicated to the Internet-of-Things. This will happen due to better deployment of smart card and RFID technologies with more mobile service providers involved; the three mobile companies in China have just obtained the license from the central bank of China to officially operate mobile payment business. It is obvious that the whole value chain in the mobile payment industry will benefit as the national standards for types of NFC technology for mobile payments have now been formally stipulated between the mobile companies and the banks,” said Eddie Kwok, CEO of Sunward Telecom, Hong Kong.
Kicking off this year’s CARTES in Asia is the popular and extremely informative Asian Card Summit featuring speakers from American Express, Eastcompeace Smart Card, Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, VeriFone and Watchdata. In addition, experts from all over the world will present at the co-located two-day conference featuring presentations and discussions on:
ID management & e-Government
Mobile payment & financial services
NFC & contactless applications
Prepaid &loyalty programs
E-transactions & e-banking
IT security, cloud computing & internet of things
“Never before has there been such interest in mobile payments and multi-application card – especially in Asia-Pacific where you have an enormous tech savvy population and governments, as well as private companies, committed to making payments easier and more convenient. CARTES in Asia showcases a multitude of cash-free technology and is attended by decision makers from across Asia-Pacific making it a vital event in the exhibition and conference calendar,” said Isabelle Alfano, director of CARTES events, Comexposium.
On the first day of CARTES in Asia, the winner of The Asian SESAMES Awards will be announced. The SESAMES Award rewards the best innovative technological application developed for the Asian-Pacific market in the field of smart cards, digital security, identification, secure transactions, and contactless. The competition is open to all companies operating in the sector and the jury is composed of experts from the industry across Asia. The deadline for submission is 27 January 2012.
