Leading banks join pilots of the innovative Visa Card with one-time code

Visa Europe today announced that a range of Europe’s leading banks will take part in pilots of its new card with a one-time code solution which was announced a few months ago. Four banks including MBNA, a Bank of America company in the UK, Cornèr Bank in Switzerland, Cal in Israel and IW Bank in Italy will all start to pilot the new solution over the next few months.

The Visa card with one-time code offers banks an innovative solution to authenticate consumers through an alpha-numeric display and a 12-button keypad built into a conventional credit, debit or prepaid card. It is a neat solution for consumers to use and also contains a battery designed to last three years. The product has been developed in conjunction with EMUE technologies.

 
Thanks to this product, cardholders will be protected by a secure solution for online shopping, when ordering over the telephone or for online banking. When used with Verified by Visa (VbV) the consumer would not need to register or remember usernames and passwords, instead they would enter their PIN into the card which creates a unique code for a specific purchase or transaction.

The card will help in the fight against card-not-present (CNP) fraud in two ways. Firstly, as the one-time code generated is for a specific transaction, once used it cannot be used again by anyone. Secondly a fraudster would need to be able to get hold of a card and know the persons PIN in order to commit fraud. By positioning this breakthrough technology to consumers in Europe, Visa Europe believes this will provide more consumers with greater confidence to shop online and provide its member banks with a unique solution for online and telephone transactions.

Sandra Alzetta, SVP, Head of Innovation and New Products at Visa Europe, comments: “Visa Europe is excited by this new product, which we believe greatly increases security and consumer confidence to shop online. The interest in this solution in the industry has been overwhelming and we look forward to working with the banks involved in the pilots to gain greater insights into how effective this solution can be in the longer term.”

Brendan McKeegan, CEO of EMUE Technologies: “We are pleased to be working with Visa Europe to pioneer this technology in Europe. In choosing Visa as a partner we feel that we are able to realise the interest in our technology and look forward to providing the industry with a cost-effective and reliable solution in the emerging area of consumer authentication.”

The process of validating the transaction is done in three simple steps:

• When shopping online or logging in to an online banking service, the consumer activates the authentication process by pressing the appropriate option button on the card’s keypad
• When prompted the consumer inputs their standard PIN into the keypad embedded in the card
• A unique one-time-only code appears on the card’s display panel, which is then used by the consumer to authenticate the transaction

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Note to editors

For details of the Visa card with one time code in action visit the following video links:

EMUE video - scenario 1 (Windows Media format 3.0MB)

EMUE video - scenario 2 (Windows Media 4.8MB)

About Visa Europe 

In Europe, there are over 360 million Visa debit, credit and commercial cards. In the 12 months ending June 2008, those cards were used to make purchases and cash withdrawals to the value of over €1.3 trillion. 11.4% of consumer spending at point of sale in Europe is with a Visa card.

Visa Europe is owned and operated by its 4,600 European member banks and was incorporated in July 2004. In October 2007, Visa Europe became independent of the new global Visa Inc., with an exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual licence in Europe.

As a dedicated European payment system it is able to respond quickly to the specific market needs of European banks and their customers - cardholders and retailers - and to meet the European Commission’s objective to create a true internal market for payments.

Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance around the world. In addition, Visa/PLUS is one of the world’s largest global ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency in over 170 countries.