Credit Card Blog

I’m going to get a bit technical here - and talk a bit about a show that was held this week.. at the Cartes & IDentification show in fact, near Paris. 

Visa have been working on the security of credit cards and potentially debit cards, and they have come up with a card, which although not much bigger than a conventional card, has a 12 button keypad and an 8 digit display. Basically, much of the fraud that occurs with credit cards is based on the problem that the pin number is a single number and it is entered into a number of places - e.g. bank machines, when paying in-store, etc. Because it is entered into so many places where Visa has no control, security problems arise. The main concern is online transactions though - if you use your credit card on the internet there is potential for people to steal your pin, intercept it, or monitor what you type.

One of the potential solutions is to ensure that the PIN number never leaves the credit card. This way you and VISA have much more control over it. The idea would be that you have a credit card and a pin number and every time you want to use it you enter the PIN number onto the card itself which generates a single-use security code to validate an online transaction. This code changes every time so can’t be used for fraudulent purposes.   

There are rumours that MBNA will soon begin testing this card, as well as Barclaycard here in the UK. 

It’s interesting and comforting to here that Visa and other organisations are working hard to cut down on fraud and I’ll let you know if I hear any more about how this idea pans out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 3:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized.
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