The Smart Card Alliance has announced a white paper that contrasts RFID tags and contactless smart cards for ePassport and payment applications. A PDF version of the paper is available online.

RSA Security has announced the RSA Authentication Service, a consumer-focused offering that sets up RSA as the central authenticator between consumers (suitably equipped with RSA hardware or software tokens) and their online services.

Until now, users and businesses have been forced to work with a variety of disparate authentication methods of varying strength – resulting in confusion, a lack of adoption, and inadequate levels of security that have left consumers vulnerable to identity theft and other scams. RSA Security believes that, by enabling the use of a single credential that is available in a wide range of form-factors and accepted at a potentially unlimited number of sites, many existing problems can be removed.

RSA Security has announced the results of a consumer study that concludes that consumers are increasingly reluctant to conduct personal business online due to security concerns.

The study also asked for opinions relating to traditional user ID/password security schemes, with more than half of all respondents (53 percent) believing that these do not provide enough protection for online information. According to the survey, poor management of PINs and passwords for access to online services, desktop computer systems, ATMs and other electronic accounts is a major vulnerability. More than two in three respondents (65 percent) use fewer than five passwords for all electronic information access, and 15 percent use a single password for everything.

Biometric Access Company has announced that a new development alliance with VeriFone to certify its biometric identity verification solutions with VeriFone's electronic payment solutions for the multi-lane retail industry.

Billeo has announced the launch of a new bill pay service that uses toolbar technology coupled with back-end web services technologies to make consumer use of biller-direct websites much more convenient.