1974

• Roland Moreno, a former reporter for Chimie Actualités and self taught inventor, devises a revolutionary payment system. His brainchild is in fact an early electronic stored-value application mounted on a ring. The idea is simple: when the bearer needs money, he or she "loads" currency onto the ring ; the electronic money thus available can be spent at merchants that have the proper electronic payment gear.
• Roland Moreno presents his project to a few French banks.
• The protected electronic memory mounted on the ring connects to an electronic device.
• The first demonstration prototype of Moreno's electronic payment product included an integrated circuit mounted on a ring and a device made of electronic parts that could simulate a transaction.
• The first chip housed on an epoxy card. The draft proposal for international "Embossed cards specifications, numbering Systems, and Registration procedures" is adopted, as well as as the one on magnetic stripes.
• Epoxy card from a series of cards made for Roland Moreno by CII-Honeywell Bull (now known as CP8 Transac).

1975

• First card in the credit-card format, with the chip and its contacts on one side (made by CII-HB).
• Roland Moreno patents a batch of inventions.

1976

• Roland Moreno patents a second batch of inventions.

1977

• Bull CP8 is founded.
• Epoxy card housing 4Kb of MOS memory in the form of CII-HB's 54 S573 integrated circuit.
• Bipolar DIL 4Kb memory for simulator.

1978

• Michel Ugon takes out his first patents.
• Memory card built around a Siemens SIKART chip : Identification and Transaction Card.
• Operational card using 1-Kilobit of 2-ribbon TAB erasable memory made by Bull's DAN/SAI division.
• First card housing an electronic microcircuit mounted on a ribbon using tape automatic binding (TAB) technology (made byCII-HB).
• A team of senior executives from four French banks finalizes a brief on the industry's expectations and requirements formemory cards and forwards it to CII-HB. The group is made up of:

1979

• Schlumberger acquires a 15 % stake in Innovatron, the company created by Roland Moreno. Schlumberger begins research into memory cards and sets up its division "Cartes à Mémoires & Systèmes".
• Birth of the first operational microprocessor card (two-chip card) by Bull CP8 - seen face down, micromodule open.
• The card houses a memory chip and a microprocessor supplied by Motorola of the United States, where managers, at firstreluctant to embark on this adventure, finally gave the go-ahead after persistent lobbying by Marc Lassus and famous designer Arturo Kruger.
• The new product is built around the 3870 model monochip and a 2716 model EPROM (addressed through the monochip's parallel I/O ports) shipped from the U.S to Toulouse.
• Assembly took place according to novel techniques developed by Jacques Villières at Motorola's toulouse plant thanks to active support from Marc Lassus, then head of linear division in Toulouse, and Arturo Kruger.
• The device was mounted on a plastic card and tested at Bull CP8's labs in Louveciennes.
• The LEP (Philips Laboratories) design a prototype using Kapton technology.
• Schlumberger increases its stake in Innovatron to 34 % thus matching the percentage still owned by Roland Moreno.
• Bull CP8's two-chip card : First public demonstration in New-York at American Express.
• Bid for tender by French banks and the Direction générale des Télécommunications for an interbank trial of the memory-card concept.
• By November 30, seven manufacturers had placed bids : CII-HB, Dassault, Flonic-Schlumberger, IBM, Philips, Transac, Thomson.

1980

• The creation of the Memory Card Group (Groupement Carte à Mémoire). Ten French banks and the Posts Ministry have just formed a Group to study the possibility of launching a new means of payment in France: the memory card. The announcement of the Group's formation was made by Alain Le Corre, General Director of the French banking association CSBP and the Group's president, at the second annual EFMA convention.
• The Group has chosen the first three companies who will furnish the cards and the payment equipment to be used in three experimental programs. They are: CII-Honeywell Bull Flonic Schlumberger Philips Data System.
• At the initiative of a Lyon merchants' association, whose president is in charge of the local FNAC book-and- media store, the city of Lyon is chosen as the pilot site for smart card experiments in October 1980. Later, the cities of Blois and Caen will also be chosen.
• The Group announces that is has selected three manufacturers: CII-HB Flonic-Schlumberger Philips.
• The BNP, Crédit Lyonnais, and Société Générale banks also join the Groupement.
• The Antiope subscription card is developed by Télédiffusion de France.
• The first bi-chip CP8 microprocessor card appears: the "Cardiac pacemaker user identity card".
• The prototype of the Philips bi-chip card, non-optimized lab version.
• The prototype of the Philips bi-chip card, optimized lab version.

1981

• More banks join the Groupement Carte à Mémoire, which now includes:

• A certain number of private banks represented by the Banque Hervet.
• A few months later, the Société Générale leaves the group. But a major new member joins: Crédit Agricole, in March, 1981.
• The group decides to launch experiments in Spring 1982 in three cities: Blois, Caen, Lyon.
• The Télétel experiment in Vélizy is officially inaugurated by Louis Mexandeau, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications.
• Some 2,500 volunteer households take part in this French videotex experiment.
• Representatives of several European banking institutions, meeting in Brussels at the headquarters of the Crédit Commercial de Belgique, announce their intention to create, on June 16th, an international association for microcircuit cards. On that date, the presidency will be entrusted to Gérard Narmon, CEO of Crédit Commercial de Belgique.
• Called INTAMIC (International Association for Microcircuit Cards), the association brings together British financial institutions, represented by IBRO and TSB, the Danish PKK, Austria's GABE, the Dutch Bankgirocentrale, six Belgian banks, and the French banks belonging to Groupement Carte à Mémoire.
• Card experiments get under way at three sites: Blois, Caen, Lyon.
• Card produced by Gieseke & Devrient for Flonic-Schlumberger.
• First telepayment experiment in the world in the town of Vélizy.
• Beginning of AFNOR standardization.
• Philips supplies the USA government with identification cards.
• Color variations on the Philips card for the American government.
• Birth of the first mono-chip microcalculator card, the SPOM (Self-Programmable One-chip Memory), developed by the Bull team under Michel Ugon.

1982

• Along with the Vélizy Télétel experiment, CFF launches its Videobanque home banking service.
• Still in Vélizy, BRED launches a telepayment service using a smart card for customer identification.
• French Posts Minister Louis Mexandeau inaugurates the Caen, Lyon, and Blois experiments in France for the purpose of testing three different techniques conceived by Philips, Schlumberger, and Bull CP8.
• DGT orders prototype memory-card booths from Flonic and CII-HB and Crouzet. Goal: 20,000 payphones per year starting in 1986 and 1 million cards.
• A world first: 500 cards are distributed at the EFMA congress in Monte-Carlo. Congress delegates pay their expenses using the Bull CP8 smart card.

1983

• The directing committee of the Groupement Carte à Mémoire elects its new president: Louis-Noël Joly, central director of Société Générale, who succeeds Alain Le Corre.
• Philippe Rousselet, president of CANAL+, announces the launch of a study for a decoder using a memory card. The announcement is made during a press conference organized on the occasion of Agence Havas becoming a shareholder in Sligos, a subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais.
• The Telecommunications administration presents its "telecommunications card," which it plans to make available to the public starting in January 1984, at the SICOB. It is a subscriber card letting the subscriber place all calls on his telephone bill.
• That year, the DGT counts 160,000 card payphones installed in France.
• The Social Affairs minister, Pierre Bérégovoy, announces the launch of two experimental operations. Their purpose is to test the use of smart cards in the health and social services sector. Two types of experiment are planned:
• In Blois, for the health record booklets - more precisely the vaccination records - for a population of 4500 children, and another involving the French hemodialysis population. Every French hemodialysis patient would have a smart card to facilitate their access to the 150 French dialysis centers.
• The first card payphones (PF32) are installed in France by Schlumberger.
• The first payphone cards are produced by Flonic Schlumberger for France Télécom.

1984

• The French banks announce their choice of a CP8 technology chip card manufactured by Motorola and Eurotechnique (Thomson).
• Specifications and standards for the bank memory card are published by the Groupement Carte à Mémoire.
• Compagnie Financière acquires stock in Innovatron. The distribution of capital is as follows:

Schlumberger 34 %, Roland Moreno 34 %, Bull 15%, Cie Financière 5%, other shareholders 12%.

• Bull and Philips sign an agreement for Philips' use of CP8 components manufactured by Motorola and Eurotechnique.
• Bull CP8, a 100% subsidiary of Bull. Its goal: set up an autonomous structure which will manufacture the products developed by the mother company's research departments.
• End of the IPSO experiments at Blois, Caen, and Lyon. This also marks the end of the Groupement Carte à Mémoire.
• For the experiment, the Norwegian banks install 40 electronic payment terminals on merchants' premises, 15 card payphones, 10 bank card loading machines, and 10 machines for card consultation using Minitel and distribute 5,000 combination cards (stripe and chip).
• Called Télébank, the operation unites Bull - for the cards and payment terminals, Sligos for developing the computerization system, Thomson-TITN for the automatic calling system, Crouzet for the payphones, and Flonic- Schlumberger for the prepaid payphone cards. The operation is led by Bergen Bank. The new Eurotechnique memory card chip.
• Startup of a memory card experiment in Norway, at Lilleström, 25 km from Oslo.
• It's Italy's turn to launch a smart card application, using the TELLCARD card. Behind it: Banca Piccola Valtellinese, backed by the Chambre Syndicale des Banques Populaires.
• DGT has just ordered 50,000 memory card readers for connection to Minitels from a consortium made up of: Bull CP8, acting as general contractor Philips Radiotechnique, which is in charge of manufacturing the readers CII-HB, which handles research and development.
• The totality of the smart card aspects are sub-contracted to Sligos. Delivery of the readers is planned for early 1986. They will be shipped via subscription, the cost of which is estimated to be 40 French francs.
• MasterCard International hires the consulting firm of Arthur D. Little to do a study of the feasibility and appropriateness of the French memory card.
• A German bank issues a call to tender for suppliers of a memory card. Constraint: alliance with the German Giesecke, official supplier of the Eurocheque cards.

1985

• Russel E. Hoog, President of MasterCard International, signs an agreement with the management of MCTI, the American subsidiary of Bull CP8, for the launching of an experiment involving memory cards for a payment application in the United States. The same agreement is made with the American subsidiary of the Japanese Casio Microcard.
• Visa International announces the final development of the Super Smart Card: a chip card including a keypad and a viewing screen.
• The CB bank card group signs an agreement with Bull CP8 for supply of 12.4 million microprocessor cards by the end of 1988.
• The Carte Bleue group develops another function: the electronic token purse. It will be able to be used to pay small sums as soon as the CB Blue Card is equipped with a microprocessor.
• The first electronic token purse. Lyon Parc Auto entrusts the regional direction of Crédit Lyonnais Rhône-Loire-Auvergne with implementing an electronic payment system for the parking meters on public thoroughfares. The system uses a memory card from Paymatec- Schlumberger, which also provides readers that can be adapted to the latest generation of meters.
• CEPREM (Center for promotion and research for European currency) proposes the issue of a memory card which would be use the ECU. This card could be used in the European Community countries for payment of services like telephones, parking lots, tollways, or any other service in the non-competitive services sector.

1986

• By a decree of February 18th, the Defense Minister defines the cryptographic resources, such as equipment and software, designed either to transform non-encrypted information or signals into unintelligible information or signals according to secret conventions, or to perform the inverse operation.
• By this same decree, all persons or entities in possession of cryptographic resources for professional or private use are required to request the needed authorizations from the administration within three months of the official publication of the decree.
• Thus, videotex services applications using memory cards to provide message security will first have to obtain approval from the French Postal and Telecoms administration before being sold or used.
• CREG tests the memory card with its new credit card. This is the first experiment carried out by a financial establishment using private cards. Some forty merchants belonging to the association "Les Boutiques de Chartres" take part In the operation.
• An audit of the memory card experiments in France shows a total of 85,430,000 FF in aid from public authorities for the period of December 1981 to October 1986.
• The total aid granted by public authorities - via the Telecommunications administration and the Industry Ministry - reached 14 million FF for that same period, or slightly more than 16% of the total.
• 250,000 bank smart cards are in use.
• Visa International publishes the results of its microprocessor card study, done in collaboration with the Bank of America, Royal bank of Canada, and the French CB group. This study shows that the memory card can increase the security and lower the cost of transactions.
• A few months later, the experiments on electronic payment by microprocessor card launched by MasterCard International and involving the French Bull CP8 technology and Japan's Casio Microcard begin.
• In March, 14,000 cards equipped with the Bull CP8 have been distributed to clients of the Bank of Virginia and the Maryland National Bank, and 50,000 Casio cards to clients of the First National Palm Beach Bank and the Mall Bank.
• MasterCard conducts two studies: one, on the physical characteristics of cards, is entrusted to the Arthur D. Little bureau; the other concerns the possibilities of reading the microprocessor's secret area and is conducted by Tecknikon.
• Visa takes delivery of the first two prototypes of the Super Smart Card, named ULTICARD, of the two hundred it ordered to run a test with a few of its clients.
• These two prototypes are made by the American company Smart Card International, founded and headed by Arlen K. Lessin in 1983.
• The latter had previously been given the job of introducing French technology to the United States at the expense of the Telecommunications administration.
• The Ulticards are manufactured by General Instrument Corporation, Microelectronics Division.
• Michel Ugon is named Chevalier of the Ordre National du Mérite.

1987

• The memory card does not cause a sensation at MasterCard. A steering committee meeting on Sunday, January 18^th decides that despite the good impression the card's capabilities make on them, decide that certain key areas - without saying exactly which - need to be analyzed in more detail.
• On June 23rd, the members of the Groupement Carte à Mémoire decide to dissolve their group, progressively transferring all its activities to the CB group.
• As of October 1st, 1987, the chip bank card can be used in payphones. The agreement signed on July 21st between DCT and the CB group provides that holders of a bank card can use 140 basic units, or 107 FF worth, which will then be debited from their bank account.
• The issuing of bank memory cards is being slowed. According to Crédit Agricole,
• 'The development plan adopted by the CB group's direction cannot be implemented within the time period and under the conditions prescribed.'.
• The bank decides to postpone delivery of the cards until June.
• Innovatron is licensing. After Toppan Printing and Casio, Innovatron has just granted world rights on its memory card patents to the Japanese printer Daï Nippon Printing. These three licensees join the eleven others : Bull, Schlumberger, Philips, Electronique CKD, Crouzet, Sligos, Ingenico, Logicam, Ordicam, Microcard Technology, Smart Card International.
• Closing the forum on "Financial Europe in 1992," organized by Charles Copin and René Tendron, Former Finance Minister Edouard Balladur declares: 'We should be prepared to take advantage of the opening of borders in the area of means of payment and electronic transfer. Our advance, notably in the area of microprocessor cards, should make it possible for us to impose French technology at the European Community level'.
• Bank of America issues memory cards for the 1,600 employees at its card banking operations center in Pasadena, California. Standards
• ISO Standard 7816-1, concerning the card's physical characteristics.

1988

• Bull CP8 plans to start a joint venture with Daï Nippon Printing, who controls 50% of the Japanese magnetic stripe card market.
• Midland bank launches a microprocessor card.
• The bank memory card plan resumes. After much hesitation on the implementation of the French microprocessor card payment system, the plan defined in 1985 seems to be readopted.
• Société Générale's president, Marc Viénot, feels that the advisability of setting up a bank card payment system in France needs to be studied.
• In a letter to his peers in the APE, the president makes his argument in three points:
• First, the expected revenue was not forthcoming, and further, the expenses engendered by the operation of the card payment system are higher than was predicted.
• Secondly, the technical problems encountered, especially the "chip killer terminal" affair.
• Finally, he feels that the two networks, MasterCard and Visa, are going to develop a new electronic anti-fraud system that will not use the French technology. In other words, Société Générale's president is afraid of launching a system that only the French banks will use.
• ISO Standard 7816-2 concerning the role and position of the card's electrical contacts.

1989

• A Thomas Cook experiment involves the use of a memory card as an electronic traveler's check.
• CANAL+, whose president had been favorable to a memory-card decoding system, reconsiders: Much too expensive'. Such was the conclusion of studies done by the pay TV channel.
• For its part, Gemplus obtains a contract in Great Britain. The company, led by Marc Lassus, will provide two pay TV channels, Sky Movies and Disney Channel, with memory cards for subscriber identification.
• New hope for manufacturers. There is talk of putting the memory card payment system program in France back on track. This is a great relief for companies, notably Bull CP8, which had invested in the light of a future generalization of the system.
• After Brittany, Provence, and Lyon-area residents, Parisians should now know the joys of the PIN code.
• ISO Standard 7816-3 concerning electrical characteristics and exchange protocol (T=0).