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Contactless card shipments 'will reach 3.5bn in 5 years'
26 Sep 2011

Contactless smart card shipments look set to reach 3.5 billion over the course of the next five years, according to a new report.

The study, conducted by IMS Research and entitled The World Market for Smart Cards and Smart Card ICs - 2011 Edition, forecast an increase from approximately 950 million shipments in 2010 to 3.5 billion by 2016, with more than 30 per cent of all smart card shipments being contactless by this date.

Don Tait, one of the authors of the report, said: "Contactless bank cards are believed to drive much of the growth in the microcontroller market during the forecast period."

The study predicted the top contactless applications for the coming five years will be in the fields of government and healthcare ID cards, transportation and physical access cards and bank cards.

Jemma Smith, spokesperson for the UK Cards Association, recently predicted that the number of contactless devices in circulation across the country by the end of 2012 will have risen from 16.3 million to 30 million.