Smart Card Readers/Terminals

For the sake of clearly defining all of the different hardware devices that smart cards can be plugged into, the industry has adopted the following definitions:

The term 'reader' is used to describe a unit that interfaces with a PC for the majority of its processing requirements. In contrast a 'terminal' is a self-contained processing device.

Both readers and terminals read and write to smart cards. Readers come in many form factors and in a wide variety of capabilities. The easiest way to describe a reader is by the method of it's interface to a PC. Smart card readers are available that interface to RS232 serial ports, USB ports, PCMCIA slots, floppy disk slots, parallel ports, infrared IRDA ports and keyboards and keyboard wedge readers.

Another difference in reader types is the on-board intelligence and capabilities. Extensive price and performance differences exist between an industrial strength intelligent reader that supports a wide variety of card protocols and a home style win-card reader that only works with microprocessor cards and performs all processing of the data in the PC.

The options in terminal choices are just as wide. Most units have their own operating systems and development tools. They typically support other functions such as magnetic-stripe reading, modem functions and transaction printing.

Source : http://www.smartcardbasics.com/readers.html