personal computer memory card international association (PCMCIA)

The PCMCIA association was constituted at the end of the 1980s and introduced a standard for PC expansion cards, the PCMCIA cards, and a corresponding bus system in 1989. In 1995, the PCMCIA card was renamed the PC Card, and in 2004, the successor to the PC Card, the ExpressCard, came onto the market.

The members of the association include leading companies from the fields of peripherals, software, hardware and applications. The association's mission is to provide application-specific expansion capabilities to users of portable personalcomputers (PCs) with PCMCIA slots.

PCMCIA works closely with the Japanese Electronic Industry Development Association( JEIDA), which started corresponding activities as early as 1985. Therefore, there are certain versions of both systems that are compatible with each other.