Although the basic function of physical access control can be considered simple, that is, to allow authorized personnel to gain access to buildings and deny unauthorized entry, the problem should not be so drastically simplified. In this work, we present two solutions to this problem that make use of special devices named TICA and smartcards. These proposals follow different approaches to manage permissions and authorizations. On the one hand, we present a centralized and on-line solution that makes use of one central database containing the privileges assigned to every user. On the other hand, we describe a system where the authorization-related information is managed in a distributed way. It is an off-line solution based on a RBAC (Role Based Access Control) model that has been designed using authorization certificates.