<P> In 1968 and 1969 Helmut Gröttrup and Jürgen Dethloff jointly filed patents for the automated chip card . Roland Moreno patented the memory card concept in 1974 . An important patent for smart cards with a microprocessor and memory as used today was filed by Jürgen Dethloff in 1976 and granted as USP 4105156 in 1978 . In 1977 , Michel Ugon from Honeywell Bull invented the first microprocessor smart card with two chips : one microprocessor and one memory , and in 1978 , he patented the self - programmable one - chip microcomputer ( SPOM ) that defines the necessary architecture to program the chip . Three years later , Motorola used this patent in its `` CP8 '' . At that time , Bull had 1,200 patents related to smart cards . In 2001 , Bull sold its CP8 division together with its patents to Schlumberger , who subsequently combined its own internal smart card department and CP8 to create Axalto . In 2006 , Axalto and Gemplus , at the time the world 's top two smart - card manufacturers , merged and became Gemalto . In 2008 , Dexa Systems spun off from Schlumberger and acquired Enterprise Security Services business , which included the smart - card solutions division responsible for deploying the first large - scale smart - card management systems based on public key infrastructure ( PKI ) . </P>
who invented the chip in . debit cards
Helmut Gröttrup Jürgen Dethloff