Let me put it in easy-to-understand language.

IC cards include three types of cards: storage cards, encryption cards and smart cards.

Storage cards are rarely used nowadays; encryption cards are common bus cards and all-in-one cards, which are just storage cards with an encryption algorithm added to them. They have poor security and are generally used for small purchases; A smart card is a complete computer architecture, including CPU, memory, and hard disk (of course this is a popular term, strictly speaking it should be a coprocessor, register, and EEPROM). This kind of card can perform calculations on its own, so it can be used It is very flexible and highly safe. It is mainly used in China for Sinopec gas cards, highway cards, etc.

However, the use of IC cards must be coordinated with a card reader, which causes inconvenience to some individual users. With the popularity of the USB protocol, a smart card and card reader are combined Something is produced, which is USBKEY. Usbkey is now mainly for end users, such as online banking, identity authentication, electronic signatures, etc. But the chip in Usbkey is the same as the smart card, and the functions are the same.