Toppan develops post-quantum smart card for government, healthcare IDs

Toppan has developed a contact and contactless smart card that runs NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithms alongside conventional cryptography for government and medical authentication.

PQC CARD Dual supports ML-KEM for establishing shared cryptographic keys and ML-DSA for creating and verifying digital signatures. It also includes RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) to allow issuers to continue working with existing readers and authentication systems.

The card builds on Toppan’s earlier work on post-quantum migration. Toppan, Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and Isara recently completed a proof of concept for moving certificate-authority infrastructure to PQC.

The dual-interface smart card addresses the risk of quantum computers breaking the current public key cryptography security. Government and medical credentials are particularly vulnerable because they can remain in use for years and protect sensitive identity and health data.

In the healthcare setting, the smart card could be used to authenticate patients, medical professionals, or institutions when accessing patient health records, signing prescriptions, or exchanging information with insurers.

Toppan says moving post-quantum algorithms onto a smart card has been difficult because their keys, signatures, and calculations require more working memory. The company addressed this with its proprietary “memory-saving” technology.

According to Toppan, the design allows the card to complete the arithmetic required by PQC without reducing the memory available to its operating system and existing applications. The company describes the resulting processing as high-speed.

The implementation runs on Java Card, which is an interoperable platform that hosts multiple applications on resource-constrained smart cards and secure elements. It allows identity, payment, and access applications to coexist on the same hardware and be reused across compatible products.

Toppan plans proof-of-concept testing in public services, medicine, and other high-security sectors this year and to start offering the smart card in fiscal 2027, provided the testing results show its effectiveness.

Article Topics

authentication  |  post-quantum cryptography  |  smart card  |  Toppan