Ultimate credit card with own calculator

Press, 26 February 1986, Page 34

Ultimate credit card with own calculator

By AAP correspondent JACK LOWENSTEIN NZPA-AAP Sydney

A plastic credit card where you key in your own spending limit through a calculator on the front and which the card company can cancel by bleeping a radio pager miles away, has become a reality. The technology already exists, said Werner Thelen, general manager of Visa International in Australia, although the super smart card — as Visa and other credit card companies have dubbed it — is still a few years away from your pocket.

A credit card with a silicon chip built into it is already in use in France, and some parts of America and Japan.

Coming soon, possibly for test in Australia where Visa has reported gaining its millionth card holder, is an improved standard card with a smarter magnetic strip on the back to include credit limits and

other personal information.

These three new generations of credit cards are being launched to reduce the cost of financial transactions and to prevent fraud, but will also open the door for many uses not now available. “Such a card becomes a thin, tiny bank, complete with a personalised vault combination, running balances — credit and debit, and confirmation of availablity of funds (for the vendor),” Charles Russell, world president of Visa International, said recently.

The existing magnetic strips on Bankcard and the international Visa and Mastercharge cards are already used to operate Electronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sales terminals. These terminals are in turn, linked with the banks.

The dream of using the ultimate credit card with a calculator is to remove the need for retailers to have to operate any

machinery at all. To make a purchase with the new card buyers will simply key in their own personal identification number (PIN). The vendor will key in the price and his establishment number, and the calculator screen will show an authorisation number. When the card starts to run low on credit it can be topped up at the bank. Better still, the cardholder may be able to get an authorisation to extend his credit over the telephone from the bank — and PIN in the appropriate numbers to his card.

Personal banking over the air waves has even become a possibility, says Mr Thelen, following Visa’s purchase of an option on a card-operating radio-pager patent.

The radio waves will carry the message renewing the card’s credit limit, or cancelling it if it is reported stolen. However many details have still to be worked out he said,

including what to do if the smart criminal illegally gets the smart card — and wraps it in lead to stop the waves getting through.

More than a million Frenchmen already have Visa’s Carte Bleue complete with microchip. By 1988 the French authorities hope to have a microchip on every card in France — and two years later have the ability to read s them in every shop in the country.

Master Card are conducting two tests with "Chip cards” in America, using the French developed system in Washington, DC, and a rival Japanese system in Florida.

Australia is some way behind and, because it already has so many magnetic strip-reading machines, may never get the simpler chip card. However, that may make the quicker development of the calculator card possible — missing out the French stage altogether.