W. Mostowski, J. Pan, S. Akkiraju, E. de Vink, E. Poll & J. den Hartog A Comparison of Java Cards: State-of-Affairs 2006 This document presents the results of a comparative study of some popular Java Cards on the market. Eight different cards from four manufacturers have been considered. The analysis has been done at two levels: (i) a documentation-based comparison, also taking other publicly available resources into account, (ii) an actual hands-on testing with software developed specifically for this purpose by the PinpasJC research team. The investigations focus on basic functionality, secure channels, the transaction mechanism, support symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, Global Platform and Open Platform compliance, and garbage and memory management.