Most modern ISO 7816 (contact) and ISO 14443 (contactless/NFC) smartcard readers are plug-and-play and rely on the PC/SC standard This means they work out of the box on mainstream operating systems for general smartcard use (authentication, PKI, card management, etc.)
Driver installation: Not required in most cases
Behavior: Windows includes native PC/SC support (winscard) and automatically installs the appropriate class driver when the reader is plugged in
Result: The reader becomes immediately available to applications using PC/SC (e.g., middleware, browsers, PKI tools)
✅ No action is required for standard use
Driver installation: Not required in most cases
Behavior: macOS ships with native PC/SC support (pcscd) enabled by default
Result: The reader is recognized automatically and usable by PC/SC-compatible applications
✅ No action is required for standard use
On Linux distributions, PC/SC is not always installed by default and may require manual setup
Required Dependency
PC/SC daemon: pcscd
Installation on Ubuntu / Debian-based systems
sudo apt update
sudo apt install pcscd pcsc-tools
Enable and start the service
sudo systemctl enable pcscd
sudo systemctl start pcscd
Optional: Verify reader detection
pcsc_scan
If the reader is correctly installed, it should appear in the output when the device is connected and a card is inserted or tapped
⚠️ Without pcscd, smartcard readers will not be accessible to applications
