Bunhill: Smarter plastic

THERE'S enormous enthusiasm in Hong Kong for a new smart (smarter? smartest?) plastic card that enables the colony's inhabitants to get their money out of the colony with even greater speed.

The new card, called Mondex (sounds like a new global stock market) was in fact developed by NatWest in conjunction with Midland, the British subsidiary of the mighty Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation.

Behind the electronic gobbledegook is an electronic wallet enabling the holder to transfer cash at the touch of a button - or rather the plugging in of a card that has a chip on it. The card comes in a plastic 'wallet' (complete with another chip), which serves as an electronic lock.

The whole package was the idea of one Tim Jones, who has been kept in a small back room by NatWest for a decade or more dreaming up ever smarter cards. He claims it all has to do with very advanced cryptography and that a man called Higgins was a great help. Anyway, if you want to use it in this country you have to go to Swindon where it's on test, which seems a bit drastic.