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The U.S. usually lags behind in government acceptance of new technology.  Our ID cards usually have barcodes, magnetic strips, or even a RFID.  The Kingdom of Bahrain will issue new electronic ID cards to its residents and citizens. 

What’s in the electronic ID card?  There is a microprocesssor by Gemalto.  The card is intended to hold biometric data, medical data, and driver’s license data amongst other things.  The cards will allow for both contact and contactless interactions meaning you could just wave your card to transmit data in areas like airports. 

Gemalto is outfitting the Kingdom of Bahrain with a million more of these ID card (Gemalto has provided the Kingdom with cards since late 2007).  These cards are about the size of a standard credit card. 

This seems like an interesting idea to have data-packed cards.  Other countries have built in a lot of this kind of functionality into cell phones, but it makes more sense to build this kind of stuff into an ID card.  It’ll probably be a long time before the U.S. has anything like this.

Read: [Gemalto Provides Kingdom of Bahrain with Additional One Million New-Generation e-ID Cards]