U.S. May Offer More Promise For Passcode Cards Than Europe

Though cards with displays that offer one-time passcodes for online transaction security could gain wider acceptance in the United States, the "jury's out" on whether the technology will win over Europeans, an executive with card vendor Gemalto NV tells CardLine Global sister publication PaymentsSource. "We are going to see the adoption of card [form] factors in the U.S. because it's familiar and people like it," says Thomas Flynn, the Amsterdam-based firm's director of marketing for identity and access management. "In Europe, you have familiarity with home [card] readers," which attach to consumers' computers to enable more-secure online-banking transactions via EMV chip cards and passcodes. Cards that display one-time passcodes generate those codes based on algorithms unique to each cardholder, and financial institutions typically store the algorithms on central servers. Consumers authenticate themselves by entering the numeric passcodes on the appropriate Web site-for instance, a bank site when initiating online transactions. The cards are the same size as traditional payment cards. "The credit card form factor is very familiar, and you can brand [the cards] in a similar way," Flynn says. Gemalto offers this technology through its Ezio Display Card, which "one major bank in the U.S." is using, he adds. Gemalto also sells at-home card readers, and the company Wednesday took a deeper step into that field when it announced it has completed the 20 million euro (US$29 million) purchase of the banking activities of France-based Xiring, which sells readers for online-banking transactions consumers complete at home.