It seems the personal banking sector has lived to witness the time of talking credit cards. A number of credit card issuers are developing a variety of cards that can tell you how much money you have and display your balance. A range of reward programs comes with the “smart plastic”. These cards will be powered by batteries lasting as long as three years. They are equipped with paper-thin microprocessors. As with all cards, talking cards will show personal details only after you enter the PIN. This is among the anti-fraud measures that credit card companies are aiming to introduce in light of the increasing frequency of scams. Among the providers preparing to release the new-wave plastic are Citibank, MasterCard and the pioneer Dynamics Incorporated. MasterCard’s card has a small LCD screen which shows a special code that is used when buying things online. Citibank’s second generation credit card has buttons on it. It can be used both for spending reward points and as a credit card.
Engineers in Santa Monica are working on credit cards that only work when their owners talk to them. The company financing this project is Beepcard Incorporated. The cards will have an inbuilt voice recognition device that recognizes the user’s voice. Users are required to give a spoken password whenever they want to use the card. There is one obvious downside to this technology – everybody around you will hear the password. This is not phasing the prospective issuer of these smart pieces of plastic one bit. Quite the opposite – Beepcard attempts to pack a loudspeaker, voice recognition device, battery, and microphone into an average-sized credit card. The prototype of the card is normal in terms of length and width, but it will come out to be about as three times as thick as normal cards, which is a problem for developers. In addition to this, they are struggling with issues involving ruggedness and durability. The battery cannot be replaced, so the card works only when it is being used. You press a button to switch it on, and it tells you to say your password.
There are bound to be a lot of issues with these cards at first. That is normal for all new and innovative products, especially products of this category. When IBM introduced magnetic strip credit cards, the incidences of fraud were extremely frequent. This continued until PIN numbers were introduced. Companies developing talking cards are taking anti-fraud measures already, such as the code, which you give to use the card. This way, you will not have to worry even if someone steals your credit card details, because their voice will not authenticate use.
Despite all this, people so far have refrained from trusting these cards. They are seen as dangerous and believed to put people in financial trouble. The new talking cards seem attractive with their displays and buttons but for now, they are just intended to lure people in. You would be better off with a standard credit card or no credit card at all. Debit cards are safer in terms of protection from financial trouble and scams.
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