IC card indicating state of usage and system therefor

摘要

An IC card whose state of usage can be judged by a user from an appearance of the card, and a relevant IC card system and method are provided. In an IC card fed electricity from an IC card reader-writer via feeding means using one of electromagnetic coupling and electrostatic coupling, and the IC card having an IC chip which communicates with the IC card reader-writer, the possible/impossible state of usage of the card by a user is determined using electric means for disconnecting or non-disconnecting the feeding means or providing another circuit and disconnecting this circuit, and appearance of the IC card is also changed at the time of the change caused by such electric means and thereby the state of usage of the card is indicated to the user.