India is expected to embrace the smart card technology in a big way, with about 400 million people projected to use the cards that have in-built microprocessors by 2009.
Currently, there are about 70 million users of the cards, which are capable of storing up to 8 MB of data ranging from driving licence to car registration particulars, among others.
"Smart card base in India is estimated at about 70 million now. This is projected to cross 400 million numbers in next few years," said M S Swarn, organiser of SmartCards Expo 2005, which kicked off on Tuesday.
Over 250 global and domestic IT players like IBM, HID, Mastercard, and TCS are participating in this expo to improve the supply chain and the invention management of firms called Radio Frequency Identification technologies.
In terms of revenue, the smart card market was forecast to grow from $47.5 million in 2004 to $248 million by 2009, Swarn said, adding that unit shipments were to register an impressive annual average growth rate of 48.4 per cent expanding from 43.1 million units in 2004 to 310 million units during same period.