Here comes the smart card Is a cashless society reality or rigmarole? >BY STEPHANIA H. DAVIS, Associate Editor-News

The undisputed popularity of the prepaid phone card has taken the carrier service industry by storm. It's a way to reach a segment of the community that local and long-distance telcos have been trying to get at for years: those people who do not have telephones and, therefore, traditional calling cards for which they can be billed.

Just five years after the first prepaid cards hit the market, they are as ubiquitous as Barney the purple dinosaur and infinitely more useful.

Carriers have gotten creative with new uses, and the cards are turning up in places scarcely imagined less than a decade ago.

The branches of the U.S. Armed Forces give them to their traveling personnel so the employees can call home. The cards offer a prescribed amount of time, usually 60 minutes.

In a non-profit use, OneLink Communications Inc. of Minneapolis gave prepaid cards to women seeking shelter from domestic violence so they could call for help in an emergency.

Pacific Bell teamed with the National Scrip Center to allow schoolchildren to sell pre-paid phone cards for fundraising rather than the usual candy.

"It's a nice way for us to help the schools raise money for technology, and the schools can offer parents and others something that has genuine value," said Susan Morrison, a Pac Bell sales manager.

Phone cards appeal to a wide range of people, and that is their strength, said William Bane, a vice president with Mercer Management Consulting. Users include college students, parents who want to give their young children a way to make an emergency call without worrying about change, and those with bad credit histories who can't get phone service but still need to make calls.

Yet for all its popularity, prepaid phone card technology is evolving from simple cards with magnetic strips to smart cards containing circuit chips. Eventually, theorists say, the smart card would become the currency of choice for everything from renting videos to paying for doctor's visits.

Smart cards are already being used throughout Europe. A smart card was tested during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. BellSouth, in cooperation with First Union Bank, issued a card that could be used at participating gas stations and sandwich shops, some BellSouth phones, and at special vending machines.

"It seemed to be very successful," said a BellSouth spokesman. "On the technical end, we had very few problems. It somewhat reduced our maintenance costs because we didn't have to send out as many coin collectors. And with so many people around, people seemed to like the idea of not having to carry a lot of money around.

Though some carriers already offer smart cards, including GTE and SmartTalk Teleservices Inc., they are still a year or two away from flooding the market. But will the smart card end up like the much-ballyhooed debit card that, when introduced a few years ago, was supposed to replace the credit card and traditional ATM card? "It all depends on whether the vendors offer the consumer enough services to carry these things around," Bane said. "It will depend on banks and other industries working together with the carriers. So all the smart card rigmarole will come to pass only if they provide enough consumer benefit."

Change it on the Web MCI Communications introduced an on-line customer service center last week for buyers of its MCI One marketing plan, an integrated package of long-distance, cellular, paging and Internet services. Through the center, customers can change single-number routing, get technical support, update account information and change billing addresses. Fingers walk on-line Bell Atlantic will soon offer Interactive Yellow Pages on the World Wide Web. Besides business ads, the electronic phone book will include tailored community notices and original content on leisure travel, home improvement and local government. For those not yet on-line, the company will include an Internet Guide in the printed version of its Yellow Pages.