Smart cards, with their computer chip-enabled functionality, have been slow to catch on in the U.S., but that is beginning to change very quickly. They are familiar feeling, and in this computerized age, the idea of a chip on a card is hardly far-fetched.

Smart cards face a greater challenge, however, in that the card-centric infrastructure - everything from bank ATMs and credit card readers to corporate access control systems - was not set up to read them. But the U.S. government and the banking industry both are taking steps to remedy that.