Does every SmartCard have unique ID?

Question

Does anyone knows if every SmartCard has some unique identifying number that can be read by using ordinary card reader?

Number format doesn't matter at all (or string format), just the fact that it exists and that it's readable is enough.

I know that new smartcards can be programmed to my liking, and that I can issue unique IDs to them in the process, but I'm more interested in reading unique ID from credit cards, phone calling cards, stuff like that.

I should probably mention what is intended purpose for this, before I get incinerated. I want to find easy way to uniquely identify walk-in customers, most of people have at least one smartcard in their pocket...

Answer 1

No, cards are not guaranteed to have uniq ID-s or any kind of "serials" at all.

You could do some heuristics based on the card like calculate a fingerprint based on some known data sources on common cards (I assume you mean contact cards like credit cards) but that would tie a customer to a card, not the the person. What happens if the card is stolen?

Answer 2

I would imagine that the ID of a credit card (if it exists) would be hidden or encrypted in some way to prevent (easy) access. Otherwise the card would be easy to clone.

Answer 3

At least some person ID cards do have a unique ID string that can be used to identify the card. Don't know about credit or phone cards, though.

Manufacturing a (cloned) card that has the same ID string would be of no use as there are private keys/hashes present on the card that must also match the card ID and person details, I think.