The term “electronic label” is used to designate an assembly comprising a medium, and a communications circuit of the near-field communication (NFC) type or of the radio frequency identity (RFID) type for enabling contactless communication to be established with an external device.
By way of example, such a communications circuit comprises an electronic chip and a near-field communications antenna. The antenna is generally connected to the electronic chip and serves not only as contactless communications means, but also to deliver the energy required for powering the electronic chip.
It is known to form the medium for the electronic label in a pre-cut portion of a smart card body of standardized format. Generally, smart card bodies have a format defined by a standard, e.g. the ISO-7816 standard. By way of example, the conventional format for bank cards is the ID-1 format of that standard.
This makes it possible in particular to take advantage of existing production machine tools that are adapted to the standard smart card format in order to fabricate such electronic labels even if the format of the labels is not standardized.
At the end of the fabrication steps or when selling a product, the portion defining the medium for the electronic label is separated and the surplus plastics material surrounding the medium is discarded.
This is particularly expensive and is not ecological, particularly since the medium of the electronic label generally represents less than half the total surface area of the card body from which it is cut out.
In an attempt to comply with present-day economic and ecological constraints, one solution consists in forming at least two labels in a single card body. Under such circumstances, the card body carries two near-field communications circuits, one for each label, each circuit comprising in particular a microcircuit and a near-field communications antenna.
Unfortunately, the presence of two circuits gives rise to a particular drawback during the steps of electronically personalizing electronic labels. The term “electronic personalization” is used to mean specifically incorporating data into a memory of the microcircuit, said data corresponding for example to identity data of a future user of the label.
During electronic personalization of labels, data specific to each label is transferred to the microcircuit of each label by means of a magnetic field emitted by external equipment. In order to optimize the time taken for personalization, the card body is brought under the external equipment that emits the magnetic field. There is then a significant risk of the magnetic field emitted by the reader reaching both labels simultaneously, even though only one of them should be reached in order to receive the data that is specifically intended for that one alone.
Consequently, at the end of those steps, doubt may remain as to the personalization that has actually been achieved for each of the labels.