16 GlobalPlatform Card Specification 2.1.1 03/25/2003
Copyright
2003 GlobalPlatform Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The technology provided or described herein is subject to updates, revisions, and extensions by GlobalPlatform. Use of this
information is governed by the GlobalPlatform license agreement and any use inconsistent with that agreement is strictly
prohibited.
1. Introduction
GlobalPlatform is an organization that has been established by leading companies from the payments and
communications industries, the government sector and the vendor community, and is the first to promote a global
infrastructure for smart card implementation across multiple industries. Its goal is to reduce barriers hindering the
growth of cross-industry, multiple Application smart cards. The smart card issuers will continue to have the
freedom to choose from a variety of cards, terminals and back-end systems.
For smart cards to reach their true potential, consumers need to be able to use them for a wide variety of
functions. For example, the cards can be used with mobile phones to make purchases over the Internet as well as
to securely access a PC. Smart cards should also be cost effective and easily multifunctional.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, a number of very significant breakthroughs occurred in the chip card industry with
the introduction of open systems specifications for Application development. The three leading technologies in
this area are Java Card™, Windows® Powered Smart Cards, and MULTOS™. These technology specifications
provide an important contribution to the solution towards the multi-Application chip card vision, such as common
programming standards allowing Application portability between different card specific implementations.
Through the Open Platform initiative, first Visa International and now GlobalPlatform have been working with
the chip card industry to deliver a missing and critically important chip card standard — a hardware-neutral,
vendor-neutral, Application-independent card management specification. This new specification provides a
common security and card management architecture that protects the most important aspect of a chip card system
investment — the infrastructure.
GlobalPlatform defines a flexible and powerful specification for Card Issuers to create multi-Application chip
card systems to meet the evolution of their business needs. The specification allows them to choose the card
technology that is right for them today while also ensuring that they can migrate, if necessary, to a different card
technology in the future without significant impact to their infrastructure.
This specification describes the GlobalPlatform Specifications that shall be implemented on GlobalPlatform smart
cards.
The following meanings apply to SHALL, SHOULD, and MAY in this document:
• SHALL indicates that the statement containing the SHALL must be implemented as defined in this
Specification. It does not mandate the implementation of the statement.
• SHOULD indicates a recommendation. It is strongly recommended to implement the statement as
defined in this Specification.
• MAY indicates an option.
1.1 Audience
This specification is intended primarily for card manufacturers and application developers developing
GlobalPlatform card implementations. Although this specification defines card components, command interfaces,
transaction sequences, and interfaces that can be common across many different industries, it does not detail the
implementation of the lower layers security, which may vary from one industry to the other.
This specification is also intended for a more general audience as it describes the generic security concepts and
the various actors involved in a multi-Application Card Management System.