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Credit cards are about to get a whole lot smarter.
If you think about it, credit cards designs have, for the most part, stayed virtually the same over the years. They are rectangular, thin pieces of plastic with raised numbers on the top. I can remember when I would go shopping with my dad as a kid, the sales clerk would place the credit card into a metal device. Then, she would put a piece of paper with carbon paper under it, and slide a roller across the whole thing, making a print of the card information. At the end of the day, when the reciepts where tallied, the company would then send the forms to the credit card company. Unless, of course, it was a store card, in which case your purchase amount would be added to your store credit account. Smaller stores would keep a notebook behind the counter and just write in the amount of the purchase on a page that was your account.
But, times have changed, and so it seems will the credit card. Dynamics, Inc will be unveiling their new card, Redemption. It is being demonstrated at the Finovate Fall 2010 financial innovations convention in New York. This card doesn't have the typical machine readable chip, but it has two small membranes along with LCD lights. This allows you to select the type of payment you want to use, and then the card reprograms the magnetic strip, allowing the store's machine to understand the transaction.
According to Dynamics, Inc:
"Redemption™ will work at any merchant where magnetic stripe readers are used. The face of the device is printed with a single credit account number and includes two buttons with associated light sources. A user can choose whether to use points or use credit at the point of sale by pressing the appropriate button. The card will then visually indicate the selection by turning ON the light source associated with the selected option. The magnetic-stripe information associated with the payment option is then written to the Electronic Stripe™. The card can then be swiped at any magnetic stripe reader and the information is then received and processed by Citi."
This type of card will offer much more security than a traditional card and has the added benefit of being able to incorporate the use of loyalty program points in the payment. CitiBank has been doing trials of this card on a very limited basis, but is planning a much larger trial in November.
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By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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