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While bankers have been waiting for mobile phones that could contain multiple contactless accounts, U.S. Bancorp has introduced the capabilities in a card. The Minneapolis-based company announced Wednesday it has begun a pilot of a Visa-branded payment card that has both magnetic stripe and contactless features and that also can serve as an identification and access-control card to unlock doors. Dominic Venturo, chief innovation officer at U.S. Bank Retail Payment Solutions, says the company just started the three-month trial of the technology in one of its office buildings in Minneapolis. A single card with multiple uses could be attractive in campus environments, such as colleges, where it could authorize student access to dormitories, laboratories and cafeterias, he says. Corporate health care and government complexes also may be interested in the technology. During the pilot, employees will be able to load funds into a prepaid account, which the card would access when used at vending machines. In a commercial deployment, payments could be linked to conventional U.S. Bank deposit accounts, Venturo says. There is no set number of employees to participate in the pilot, he says. "We've made it available to an entire floor," giving the employees the choice to enroll.
