US engineers
have put a microphone, loudspeaker, battery and voice-recognition
chip into a card the length and width of an ordinary credit card.
But the prototype is still about three times thicker than a
normal credit card and the company, Beepcard, now plans to use
smaller chips to reduce the card to regular size.
According to a report in New Scientist, the user would press a
button on the card to turn it on and prompt it to ask for a
password.
Beepcard hopes to make the card capable of 10 uses a day for two
years before the battery expires.