Tuesday, October 4, 2022
Nobel laureates Alain Aspect from Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique, France; John F. Clauser, J.F. Clauser & Assoc., Walnut Creek, Calif.; and Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, Austria, proved that quantum mechanics enables two or more particles to exist in an entangled state and influence each other, even if they are far apart.
“The ineffable effects of quantum mechanics are starting to find applications,” the Academy declared in a statement. “There is now a large field of research that includes quantum computers, quantum networks and secure quantum encrypted communication.”
Dale Laszig, senior staff writer at The Green Sheet, also chose the word “ineffable” to describe quantum technology during an August award presentation at MPC: The Digital Commerce Event. “This year’s recipient is bumping up against something ineffable,” she said. “We’ve heard the term ‘quantum resistance’ several times today and it’s amazing that I can talk about a technology in the same breath as Einstein and Newton and Maxwell.”
In presenting the 2022 Visionary Award to MagTek for its Qwantum Private Messaging solution that leverages quantum technology, Laszig noted that even physicists who have proven quantum theory cannot always articulate its finer points.
Andy Deignan, vice president, global marketing and strategy at MagTek, thanked Laszig and MPC for the award, stating MagTek is celebrating its 50th year in business and has expanded beyond encryption to protect all types of data.
“What a privilege to be honored by executives at The Green Sheet and members of the MPC executive team,” he said, calling the conference a phenomenal opportunity to network, to learn about what’s happening in the industry, where "clearly, there’s a lot going on.”
Anders Irbäck, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, noted that it has taken years to sort out the particles within entangled pairs, due to their hidden variables. However, John Clauser developed John Bell’s ideas from the 1960s and Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger further refined each other’s experiments, eventually making it possible to move a quantum state from one particle to another at a distance.
“It has become increasingly clear that a new kind of quantum technology is emerging. We can see that the laureates’ work with entangled states is of great importance, even beyond the fundamental questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics,” he said.
Among Quantum’s range of use cases are advanced quantum-resistant fraud protection schemes designed to outsmart quantum computing attacks, which experts fear may one day crack public key infrastructure. In a recent MPC panel discussion, Deignan pointed out that criminals are stealing data today with the goal of using quantum computing attacks, when they become available, to decrypt the data.
Peter Quadagno, CEO and co-founder at Vality Corp., agreed quantum-resistant technology is becoming more important to payments industry stakeholders but stated implementation has been slow. “Quantum-resistant technology is a hard sell in the payments industry because people don’t want to solve tomorrow’s problems,” he said. 
The Green Sheet Inc. is now a proud affiliate of Bankcard Life, a premier community that provides industry-leading training and resources for payment professionals. Click here for more information.
Notice to readers: These are archived articles. Contact names or information may be out of date. We regret any inconvenience.
