The Access Control Industry Standard
Mifare Classic 1K is one of the most widely deployed contactless smart card chips in the world. With 1KB of memory organised into 16 sectors of 4 blocks each, it powers billions of transit cards, employee access badges, hotel room keys, and loyalty programme cards in active daily use.
Each sector is independently protected by two keys (Key A and Key B), allowing fine-grained access control across different applications stored on the same card. Note that Mifare Classic uses a proprietary protocol and is not NFC Forum compliant — it requires a compatible reader. Not all smartphone NFC controllers can read or write Mifare Classic sectors.
- 1024 bytes (1KB) memory — 16 sectors × 4 blocks
- Independent Key A and Key B protection per sector
- ISO 14443-A compliant at the RF layer
- Proprietary Crypto-1 encryption — not NFC Forum compliant
- Widely supported in access control, transit, and loyalty readers
- Available as card, key chain, wristband, token, and sticker