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Inside Contactless is providing the chip technology for a Visa-branded prepaid card designed both to enable contactless payments and provide access control, Charlie Walton, executive vice president for payments for the France-based contactless vendor, tells CardLine Global. United States-based U.S. Bancorp is testing the card with employees at the financial institution's headquarters in Minneapolis. The test involves Inside's MicroPass 4006 technology. Bancorp says the test will last three months. The cards carry Visa's payWave contactless-payment application. The multiapplication card, if successful, would enable consumers to reduce the number of cards they carry in their wallets and purses. Such a scheme would resemble the situation envisioned for Near Field Communication, a contactless technology that enables consumers to make card payments, pay transit fares, buy concert tickets and perform similar functions with a single mobile phone. That gives the U.S. Bank test a larger significance, Walton says. "[The test] begins to set the stage for many of the detailed-use scenarios for NFC to flourish," he says. The cards being used in the U.S. Bank test also are applicable to universities, where students could use them to access dorms and labs and pay for food and books. Similar schemes have launched in Europe, including with cards from France-based Gemalto NV (CardLine Global, 17 April and 27 March). For the cards with Inside technology, employers would load access controls into the cards' chips, Walton says.
