When you insert a card, the readout will immediately tell you how many units are left on your card.
One simple idea is that parting with physical money is a more concrete action than inserting a card in a machine.
By inserting a card punched with holes, an operator could control the motion of the rods and thereby alter the pattern of the weave.
Soon Luis Elias, a technician for Time Warner Cable of New York, was moving smoothly through their one-bedroom apartment in Stuyvesant Town, installing an external modem integrated with a wireless router, inserting a card in the couple's laptop, equipping the desktop PC with a U.S.B. adapter and checking security encryption.
A colleague had invented a way to insert a card into a machine and get money out.
Cable TV boxes, for example, require that you insert a card to prove you aren't stealing signals.
Voters activate the unit by inserting a card they are given after checking in at their polling place.
Later, vehicles may have a slot to insert a card that allows the car itself to connect to a 3G or 4G wireless network.
Yes, it sounds a little cumbersome, especially compared to the zippy process of inserting a card, scrawling your name across a touchscreen, and being done with it all.
Devices like PINSentry from Barclays and SecureKey from HSBC - which look a lot like calculators - ask users to insert a card or a code to create a unique key at each login, valid for around 30 seconds, that cannot be used again.
