Introducing a new smart card program at your site involves many parts – cards, readers, software to manage your cards, a printer if you plan to print on your cards in-house, and more. If you have an existing system but want all the benefits of modern smart cards, replacing all of those parts can be a large investment.

If you cannot afford to replace your entire system, you can follow these steps to integrate new card technology into your existing system and upgrade in several steps over time.

Integrating New Cards Into Old Systems

First, you’ll need to purchase iCLASS Seos + iCLASS cards so you have both technologies. You will also need iCLASS SE Readers – Standard profile with Maximum compatibility credential support. This allows you to read both base-level iCLASS encoding and advanced iCLASS Seos encoding.

Using cards and readers with both types of technology allows you to upgrade over time, replacing cards and readers as your budget allows or as they need replaced.

Once all your readers have been replaced with iCLASS SE readers, you can switch to iCLASS Seos only cards.

Finally, once all your cards are iCLASS Seos cards, you can configure your readers to only support the iCLASS Seos cards for improved security.

A Note on Prox Systems

If you need to integrate new iCLASS cards into a site using proximity cards, follow the above steps but start with iCLASS Seos with prox or iCLASS SE with prox cards and multiClass SE readers that can read both prox and smart cards.