Memory cards having a digital circuit and a read-write memory are well known in the art of digital storage devices, and are used for many applications such as driver licenses, credit cards, employee badges, membership cards etc.
Some of these cards, such as smart cards, are used as a bearer of identification or financial transactions providing their bearer security services, such as access to information or to money. These cards have to be secured against fraud, theft and loss. Therefore, organizations that issue these cards take several measures of security to prevent cards from reaching wrong hands.
Automatic vending machines for automatically vending different types of products that were once retailed only over the counter are very well known in the art of commerce. Typical examples are vending machines that deliver cash money, plane tickets, cellular phones, telephone cards, personal photographs etc.
Vending machines that require access to secure content of a user for completing the operation, such as automatic teller machines (ATM) machines, must be secure, fortified and monitored, making such vending machines very heavy and expensive.
Because of the alienation, competition and suspicion between the different issuers of secure memory cards of all sorts, issuers of different digital storage cards are reluctant to cooperate when it comes to sharing a common vending machine for digital storage cards. A Secure memory card, such as a SIM (Subscriber Identification Mobile) card is a smart-card-type device storing secured data (e.g. private key for identification of a user). ATM machines are an exception as different banks share the same vending machine, but this is a case where the delivered product is a uniform and non-customized product, such as bills of money, and where there is no competition between the vendors, as each user consumes cash from his/her own bank account.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have a solution by which several card issuers could serve their customers with enhanced and more economic services, which are not provided by solutions known in the art.