actually data in smartcard will do nothing about crypto, crypto is done by system to read smartcard,
if you want design a IFD(interface device) , just simple transmit and read data from smartcard,
not do any protocol decoding logic
yes, there are smart cards that encloses
crypto functions. My question is which is the most
widespread secure protocol that smart card uses
for electronic transactions.
That depends on the application. In a banking environment often used algorithms are RSA & DES (on the card) especially for challenge-response-authentication. But I doubt if datasheets are available without signing a NDA....
ISO7816 is the standard for contact smart card and ISO1443 is for contactless smart card.But they're not cryptographic standards.Normally,there're a 1024/2048 bit RSA co-process module and a DES/3DES module in the card which supports hardware encryption.You can refer to Infineon,ST,Philips and Atmel's correlative products.
There are a lot of cryptography scheme which is used in smart card. It depends on the card type and operating system.
For example in Mifare card DES cryptography is used, but in Mifare DESFire , 3DES is used in many smart cards 3 DES is used. However RSA is used in some card that make them more expensive. Now modern chips have hardware cryptography that do cryptography by engines, like RSA engine DES engine ,...